PhD Studentship: The Role of Working Memory in Spelling

Faculty of Health and Life Sciences

3 Year, full-time PhD studentship

Eligibility: Home UK/EU applicants who must be permanently resident in UK (settled or pre-settled status)

Bursary p.a.: Bursary equivalent to UKRI national minimum stipend plus fees (current 2022/23 bursary rate is £17,668)

University fees and bench fees: University fees and bench fees will be met by the University for the 3 years of the funded Studentship.

Closing date: 14 April 2023

Interviews: tbc 

Start date: September 2023

Project Title: The role of working memory in spelling

Director of Studies: Dr Olivia Afonso

Other Supervisors: Dr Michael Pilling, Professor Anna L. Barnett

Requirements:

Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in the UK or acceptable equivalent qualification. EU Applicants must have a valid IELTS Academic test certificate (or equivalent) with an overall minimum score of 7.0 and no score below 6.0 issued in the last 2 years by an approved test centre.

Project Description:

Converging evidence from cognitive neuropsychology (Buchwald & Rapp, 2009), cognitive psychology (Jones et al., 2009) and developmental psychology (Gathercole et al., 2006) has confirmed the importance of working memory for orthographic processing, for both decoding (i.e., reading) and encoding (i.e., spelling). In fact, working memory deficits are often reported to be associated with spelling difficulties present in acquired and developmental dyslexia (Malstädt et al., 2012) or in ADHD (Re et al., 2014). However, working memory is thought to be a multi-component system, with different components dealing with phonological, visual and spatial information. Even the existence of a dedicated orthographic working memory system has been proposed and supported by behavioural and neuroimaging studies (Rapp et al., 2016).

The extent to which these different sub-systems are involved in spelling acquisition (and/or spelling retrieval) is still understudied. This issue is of great importance for the improvement of current theories of orthographic processing, and for enhancing our understanding of spelling difficulties. There is scope within this project to examine the role of working memory in the production of familiar words or in the learning of new words, in children and/or adults with or without spelling difficulties. It is expected that the project will make use of experimental methods, which may include response recording of chronometric measures of handwriting and keyboarding using digitising tablets or keystroke logging.

Please direct any questions about the project to Dr Olivia Afonso: afonso.o@brookes.ac.uk.

There is an additional requirement to undertake up to 6 hours undergraduate teaching/week during semesters and to participate in a teaching skills course without further remuneration.

This project is advertised on a competitive basis alongside other current Nigel Groome PhD studentship advertisements for Psychology, Health and Professional Development projects.

Entry requirements: Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in the UK or acceptable equivalent qualification. EU Applicants must have a valid IELTS Academic test certificate (or equivalent) with an overall minimum score of 7.0 and no score below 6.0 issued in the last 2 years by an approved test centre.

Application process: Please download and follow the instructions available on this page.

Contact hls-applications@brookes.ac.uk with any queries.

How to apply:

Applicants should visit the project webpage to download instructions on how to submit an online application. For application enquiries contact hls-applications@brookes.ac.uk. 

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