Dr. Richard Kruk

Biography

Education: Ph.D. 1991, University of Toronto   Functional Consequences of a Transient Visual Processing Deficit in Reading-Disabled Children     M.A. 1987, University of Toronto   An Application of the Generation Effect Paradigm to Second Language Vocabulary Learning in Greek-English Bilinguals     B.Sc. Honour's 1983, University of Toronto   Processing of Continuous Text on Video Screens

Research Interest

Why do some young children struggle to learn to read? In the Early Years Reading Lab we focus on sensory and cognitive processes that influence reading skill acquisition and reading difficulty in young children. Currently, we are carrying out studies on how developmental trajectories in early reading skills (in decoding, fluency, and comprehension) are influenced by individual differences in sensory processes related to motion sensitivity, visual attention, and rate of visual processing, and in language processes related to morphological and orthographic abilities. The aim is to understand the struggles many children experience in developing literacy skills, and to identify early indicators of potential reading difficulty in children before formal reading instruction begins. This way, early intervention practices, provided to children at the start of elementary education, can be maximally effective. The Early Years Reading Lab is equipped with two iMac workstations and two Powerbook Pro laptops with 24" monitors, running VPixx software to generate visual stimuli and present experimental tasks. The laptops are used to carry out field research in early reading development in elementary school locations. In the near future, we aim to add portable visual tracking apparatus to expand our research capabilities in visual attention and reading development.