Hugely enjoyable Experimental Psychology Society meeting, especially Marlene Behrmann’s masterclass prize lecture. Thanks to Aidan Horner and all local organisers in sunny York. 😎

Happy to have an article in this issue on the vocabulary that children encounter when reading for pleasure! Some other great articles by Ashman, Willingham, Shanahan , and Christodoulou.

Very excited to be at SSSR #SSSR2024 in Copenhagen and to be listening to Maria Korochkina talking about corpus work w/Kathy Rastle - packed audience and excellent talk! Royal Holloway Psychology 👏👏👏

Are you passionate about the social sciences and keen on expanding nature publications on societally relevant topics? If so, Nature is hiring a social sciences editor! Read more here: springernature.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/SpringerNature…

To understand why students find GCSE English literature tough, researchers Kathy Rastle and Maria Korochkina analysed hundreds of texts – and identified these 3 key reasons tes.com/magazine/teach…

We compared the vocabulary in 32 GCSE English Lit books to 200 samples of 32 books popular with British teenagers. We argue that the GCSE books will stretch avid readers with strong reading skills; these books may be inaccessible to pupils with poorer reading skills.

Congratulations, Dr. Dave Kenneth Cayado! This is going to be such an interesting (and challenging) project; can't wait to welcome you to the lab and Royal Holloway Psychology. 🤩👏💐

You can find out more about the vocabulary barrier in GCSE English Literature in this report: osf.io/preprints/osf/….

Why did English end up with such a crazy spelling system? In new research funded by The Leverhulme Trust we analysed 1000 years of English spelling to find out. Preprint here: osf.io/preprints/psya….

I have never been more excited to read a research paper than I am right now. I think this is going to make me very happy.

ESCoP comes to Yorkshire! Great news!

❝[S]pellings of Eng. words (& morphemes) largely standardized on whatever form happened to be most freq. around...17th & 18th centuries....this process occurred due to the communicative advantage of aligning on a single spelling in the context of an emerging literate society.❞

p. 1 of Why Don't Students Like School?: "Unless the cognitive conditions are right, we will avoid thinking."

Wow! And very timely. As universities and governments in Scotland & England trash free speech, Murdo Fraser explains the crucial role of liberty in Scotland’s history . It puts current academic and political leaders to shame. Hopefully Murdo is successful in becoming leader of

For a scheme that is 20 years old, there is a surprising lack of evidence to demonstrate the impact of Athena Swan Charter membership on improvements in promotion and pay for women over time.

I’ll be talking about what we’ve learned from our analysis of the words in 1200 books for children and young people: “Words in books: a challenge, a blessing, or both?” See you there!

“Free speech is neither a “nice to have” nor a rightwing project: it is a fundamental tenet of democracy and when it is under threat, it is disempowered minorities who suffer most.” 👏 Another excellent column from ⁦Sonia Sodha⁩. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

In case you missed it: Summary in Tes of work from Kathy Rastle w/Maria Korochkina analysing vocab in GCSE texts: 1) high density, 2) lots unfamiliar, 3) hard to infer meaning tes.com/magazine/teach…

If you're interested in hearing about the vocabulary that children and young people encounter when they read for pleasure, come to my session at 2.50-3.30. This is going to be such an amazing day! 🤩