MITER events
2009 MITER Lectures
This year's MITER Lecture was given on February 27, 2009, by
Dr. Ken Pugh (Haskins Laboratories and Yale University, New
Haven, Connecticut).
Dr. Pugh is President and Director of Research at Haskins
Laboratories, New Haven CT; Research Scientist in the Department
of Pediatrics at the Yale University School of Medicine; and
Director of the Yale Reading Center. His publications include:
"Effects of stimulus difficulty and repetition on printed word
identification: An fMRI comparison of non-impaired and reading
disabled adolescent cohorts," 2008, Journal of Cognitive
Neuroscience; "The angular gyrus in developmental dyslexia:
Task-specific differences in functional connectivity in
posterior cortex," 2000, Psychological Science, 11; and
"Cerebral organization of component processes in reading," 1996,
Brain, 119.
Videos
- Brown Bag Talk (60min) “Neuroimaging Studies of Reading
and Language Development: An Update on Recent Findings”
Abstract: Our research combines several
types of neuroimaging technologies with intensive behavioral
testing in order to examine developmental trajectories for
language and reading in both reading disabled and
non-impaired cohorts. In studies of both adults and
children, reading disabled readers demonstrate anomalous
brain activation patterns at posterior regions in the left
hemisphere during tasks that make explicit demands on
phonological processing, along with, what appears to be, a
compensatory reliance on frontal lobe sites and right
hemisphere systems. Brain/behavior analyses have indicated
that the development of reading fluency in young children is
strongly associated with the development of the left
hemisphere posterior reading system. Our new longitudinal
project is aimed at establishing key neuro-chemical and
genetic factors associated with atypical brain/behavior
trajectories; initial findings will be discussed. With
regard to plasticity and learning, intervention studies have
examined the influence of intensive phonological remediation
in young at-risk children, revealing substantial gains in
both reading scores and development of these left hemisphere
reading systems for children afforded this treatment. Recent
extensions of our learning research with older
reading-disabled readers continue to suggest a high degree
of plasticity in this population.
- Miter Lecture (1hr 59min) “Neuroimaging Research and
Phonological Interventions for Struggling Readers”
Abstract: In studies of both adults and
children, struggling readers demonstrate anomalous brain
activation patterns at posterior regions of the left hemisphere
during phonological processing tasks. Struggling readers also
display what appears to be a compensatory reliance on frontal
lobe sites and right hemisphere systems. Intervention studies
have examined the influence of intensive phonological
remediation in young at-risk children and have revealed
substantial gains in both reading scores and the development of
these left hemisphere reading systems for children afforded this
treatment. The presentation will describe the neuroimaging
research, the intensive phonological interventions, and the
outcome data on the interventions.
2008 MITER Lecture
Video of session is available from the link below.
Causal Conclusions from Quasi-experimental data?
presented by
William Shadish, University of California, Meced
February 22, 2008
Early social experiments in the 1960s encountered significant
technical and logistical problems, leading some researchers to
prefer other methodologies. During the last 10 years, however,
experiments have re-emerged as a more widely-used methodology.
This talk will review the events that prompted this renaissance,
and then examine progress in the use of several different kinds
of designs: the randomized experiment, the regression
discontinuity design, and the simple nonequivalent comparison
group design with a pretest. For two quasi-experimental designs,
empirical studies now suggest that they can provide estimates of
effects that are as good as those from randomized
experiments—although we still have much to learn about the
conditions under which this optimistic conclusion might hold.
Contact Peggy Ferdinand, 612-626-8269 or
mlif@umn.edu for more details. |
