Kathleen Rastle is a

cognitive psychologist Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which he ...

and Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London where she was previously the Head of Department of Psychology (2015-2019). Her research has made fundamental contributions to understanding of reading and learning to read.

Education

Rastle did her PhD with Professor

Max Coltheart Max Coltheart (born 16 April 1939) is an Australian cognitive scientist who specialises in cognitive neuropsychology and cognitive neuropsychiatry. Coltheart was born in Frankston, Victoria and grew up in Brisbane, Canberra and Bega. He commen ...

at Macquarie University, where she contributed to the development of the DRC model of

reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...

, a computational theory of how adults read aloud single words.

Career

Subsequently, her work has focused on the statistical regularities present in

written language A written language is the representation of a spoken or gestural language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will pick up spoken language or sign language by exposure eve ...

, and on how learners acquire knowledge of these through instruction and experience. She has been particularly interested in understanding how written language conveys meaningful (morphological) information and in how skilled, adult readers use this information in the initial stages of word recognition. Rastle won the British Psychological Society Cognitive Section Prize (2018) and the

Experimental Psychology Society The Experimental Psychology Society (EPS) is an academic society which facilitates research into experimental psychology and communication between experimental psychologists. It is based in the United Kingdom. The society was originally formed a ...

Mid-Career Prize (2017). She is a fellow of the

Academia Europaea The Academia Europaea is a pan-European Academy of Humanities, Letters, Law, and Sciences. The Academia was founded in 1988 as a functioning Europe-wide Academy that encompasses all fields of scholarly inquiry. It acts as co-ordinator of Europea ...

, Academy of Social Sciences, and the British Psychological Society. Rastle is President of the

and the Editor in Chief of the

Journal of Memory and Language The ''Journal of Memory and Language'' is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary academic journal of cognitive science, which focuses primarily on the issues of memory and language comprehension. It has been published by Elsevier since 1985. The curr ...

. Her research has received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council,

Leverhulme Trust The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to suppo ...

British Academy The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It was established in 1902 and received its royal charter in the same year. It is now a fellowship of more than 1,000 leading scholars spa ...

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Influence

Rastle’s research has influenced policy and practice globally in the area of reading instruction. These impacts were recognised through an Economic and Social Research Council ‘Celebrating Impact’ Prize for International Impact (2020) which she won alongside Kate Nation and

Anne Castles Anne Castles is a cognitive scientist of reading and language, with a particular focus on reading development and developmental dyslexia. Early life Castles was born in Canberra, Australia and attended St Clare's College, Canberra finishing ...

for their work on ending the reading wars.

References

External links

Rastle Lab Page
* Cognitive psychologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Linguistics journal editors Psychology journal editors Macquarie University alumni Academics of Royal Holloway, University of London Pomona College alumni British women psychologists Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences Fellows of the British Psychological Society {{UK-academic-bio-stub