Dr Rachel Pye 

Lecturer in Psychology 

Humanities and Social Sciences 

Rachel.Pye@winchester.ac.uk 

University of Winchester
Sparkford Road
Winchester
Hampshire SO22 4NR

Biography

  • BSc (Hons) Psychology (University of Birmingham)
  • MSc Research Methods (University of Reading)
  • PhD Psychology (University of Reading)

Expertise

  • Treatment programmes for Specific Reading Difficulty
  • Cross-language reading skills
  • The relationship between orthography and phonology

Publications

Forthcoming

Pye, R.E. & Riddell, P.M. (submitted). Irregular word reading relates to visual skill and pseudoword reading relates to auditory skill.

Pye, R.E. & Riddell, P.M. (submitted). Sensory deficits are found in Poor Readers, but not IQ-discrepant readers.

Pye, R.E., Kirkby, J.A, Riddell, P.M. & Liversedge, S.P. (in prep). Children’s eye movements when reading incongruently rotated words.

Pye, R.E. & Riddell, P.M. (in prep). A comparison on visual and phonological treatments for children with Specific Reading Difficulty (SRD).

Pye, R.E. & Riddell, P.M. (in prep). M-cell tasks relate to improvement with visual treatment for Specific Reading Difficulty (SRD).

Pye, R.E., Gibbons, W. & Riddell, P.M. (in prep) Rotating regular and irregular words to investigate the psycholinguistic grain size theory.

Published

Pye, R.E. (2008). Predicting improvement in dyslexia: A longitudinal treatment study. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading, UK.

Pye, R.E. & Riddell, P.M. (2008). Comparison of the effectiveness of Visual and Phonological Treatments for children with SRD [Abstract]. Perception 37, 43-43.

Pye, R.E. & Riddell, P.M. (2006). Magnocellular function contributes to reading and attention in children [Abstract]. Perception 35, 94-94.

Presentations

van Reekum, C.M, Pye, R.E., Martin, E.M & Johnstone, T. (2010). Neural substrates underlying positive framing of negative information: Age matters. Poster presented at Human Brain Mapping conference, June 2010. 

Riddell, P., Pye, R. & Gibbons, W. (2010) Using rotation to determine the reading grain size for regular and irregular English words. Paper presented at the Experimental Psychological Society Conference, Grenada, Spain, April, 2010.

van Reekum, C.M, Pye, R.E. & Johnstone, T. (2009). Analyzing graded change in BOLD responses using nonlinear curve fitting.  Poster presented at Human Brain Mapping conference, June 2009.

Pye, R. (2009). A comparison of visual and phonological treatments for dyslexia.  Invited talk at University of Winchester, March 2009.

Pye, R. (2009). Predicting treatment outcome: a longitudinal treatment study of dyslexia.  Invited talk at Forum for Literacy and Language (FRiLL), Institute of Education, London, February 2009.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2008). Predicting treatment outcome: a longitudinal treatment study of dyslexia. Paper presented at the BPS Developmental Section Annual Conference, August 2008.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2008).  Rotating regular and irregular words to test the psycholinguistic grain size theory.  Poster presented at the BPS Cognitive Section Annual Conference, Southampton, September 2008.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2008). Comparison of the effectiveness of Visual and Phonological Treatments for children with SRD.  Paper presented at the European Conference on Visual Perception, Utrecht, August 2008.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2008). Significant reading improvements with coloured-lens treatment: a comparison of visual and phonological-based treatments for specific reading difficulty. Poster presented at Festschrift for Prof Philip Smith, June 2008.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2007). Do Poor Readers show the same visual deficits as Dyslexic children?  Poster presented at Child Vision Research Society, London, June 2007.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2006).  Magnocellular function contributes to reading and attention in children.  Poster presented at the European Conference on Visual Perception, St. Petersburg, August 2006.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2006).  A longitudinal treatment study of dyslexia: comparing vision and phonology. Paper presented at PsyPAG Conference, Reading, July 2006.

Pye, R. & Riddell, P. (2004).  Early Interventions in Dyslexia.  Poster presented at PsyPAG Conference, Manchester, July 2004. Awarded 1st prize.

Research Interests

My research interests started in comparing phonological and visual treatment programmes for Specific Reading Difficulty (SRD). From this, I became interested in the link between how a word is written (its orthography) and how a word sounds (its phonology), for example ‘fox’ and ‘phoks’ sound the same but only one is a ‘real’ word. This led me to look at differences in reading regular and irregular words, when altering how easy it is to read the word by rotating letters. Alongside this, with my PhD supervisor Dr Patricia Riddell and other collaborators, we began to look at how these differences between languages can explain how we read.  Dr Riddell, with Simon Tiffin-Richards, compared English-speaking and German-speaking children reading these rotated words. I am currently close to completing a study with Dr Patricia Riddell and Prof. Taeko Wydell (Brunel University), comparing Japanese and English readers.

Funding Awards and Professional Membership

Membership:

  • Graduate Member of the British Psychological Society
  • Committee member of the Cognitive Section, British Psychological Society

Funding Awards:

  • EPS Grindley Grant for conference travel (£490) (ECVP 2006)
  • Nuffield Summer Studentship (April 2006). Awarded to P.M. Riddell & R.E. Pye. £1,440
  • Wellcome Trust Summer Studentship (April 2006). As above, £1,440
  • University of Reading Research Studentship (2004).  Fees plus £12,000 p.a. stipend