Dissertation Award

Jin Wang

The Society for the Neurobiology of Language is pleased to announce the 2022 Dissertation Award recipient: Jin Wang

The Dissertation Award is generously sponsored by Brain and Language.

The longitudinal relation between the neural basis of phonological awareness and reading skill in developing children

Friday, October 7, 2022, 3:00 - 3:45 pm EDT, Regency Ballroom

Speaker: Jin Wang, Department of Psychology and Human Development, Vanderbilt University; Graduate School of Education, Harvard University

Jin Wang completed her PhD in Psychological Sciences at Vanderbilt University in March 2022. She moved in June 2022 to join the Harvard Graduate School of Education as a post-doctoral scholar.

In her dissertation, Jin Wang systematically examined the bidirectional relation between the neural basis of phonological awareness and reading skill in developing children. This work addresses a critical debate in the literature about whether deficits in phonological awareness are the causes or consequences of reading difficulties. By using a cross-lagged panel design, neural measurements, and linked connectionist models of reading, her studies provide convincing evidence supporting a reciprocal relation between the two skills, that evolves and shifts across the developmental time course.  In addition to numerous publications related to neural specialization of language development, Dr. Wang has already published five papers from her doctoral studies and more to come in leading journals spanning the field of neuroimaging, developmental cognitive neuroscience and psycholinguistics.