PEN Distinguished Lecture Series

The PEN Distinguished Lecture Series in Educational Neuroscience was created in association with the Foundations Proseminar course for graduate students in the Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience (PEN) program. Since its inception, the series has grown!

The lecture series focuses on the intersection of the Science of Learning (learning across the lifespan) and Educational Neuroscience (learning across early life). Scientists and researchers who are pioneers in the fields of Cognitive-Educational Neuroscience, Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, and Child Development come to Gallaudet University's campus to talk about their research.

Register for Upcoming Lectures

All lectures are open to the public and are video recorded for online distribution.

PEN DLS brochure for 2023-2024


Individual Differences in Literacy Skills Among Deaf Readers

Thursday, 21 November 2013

A complete theory of literacy in deaf readers should account for individual differences. Such theories should explain how domain general cognitive skills, (e.g., working memory, executive control) and domain specific skills (e.g., orthographic and phonological processing, lexical knowledge, syntactic knowledge), interact with experience (e.g., first-language experience, 2nd language teaching methods, reading habits) to produce literacy outcomes. Recent advances in statistical modeling have provided us with the tools to evaluate such theories. This talk presents results from a large scale study of individual differences among deaf and hearing bilingual readers. The results to date highlight the importance of first language experience as a critical factor in second-language literacy.