Linnea C. Ehri

http://www.triplesr.org/misc/97ehri.html

“This presidential address was delivered at the 1997 annual meeting of Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR) Chicago. Ehri provides a glimpse of her experiences conducting research on word reading processes in beginning readers for over 20 years. At the outset, she proposed a theory that the spellings of individual words become bonded to their pronunciations in memory, and she conducted studies to obtain evidence for this theory. This led her into various controversies with other researchers over issues such as whether phonemic awareness is a cause or consequence of learning to read, to what extent beginning readers use visual cues or alphabetic cues to read their first words. The disagreements proving most fruitful were those which spawned additional research. Disputes considered unproductive and even harmful were those involving dogmatic views not open to empirical evidence and maligning appelations intended to implant prejudice. This recounting of her career underscores the value of a systematic line of research as well as intensive discussion with other researchers.”