Publications, presentations and
research studies
Our founders are world-experts in children’s reading, language, and memory skills – named among the 2023 top psychology scientists in the world. Explore key publications and research papers they have published below.
Looking for research around the NELI program? Read more on our assessments and intervention evidence page.
Publications
The Science of Reading: A Handbook (2022)
Edited by OxEd's Maggie Snowling and Charles Hulme, with Kate Nation
Provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on the science of reading and presents recent advances in the study of reading and related skills.
Dyslexia: A History (2022)
by Philip Kirby & Maggie Snowling
This comprehensive history charts a journey from Victorian medicine to dyslexia’s status as the most globally recognised specific learning difficulty.
Dyslexia: A Very Short Introduction (2019)
Written by Maggie Snowling
An accessible overview of this exciting field of research, beginning with its history, and drawing on testimony from people living with dyslexia.
Presentations
Gresham College Lecture: Dyslexia and Language - Disorder or Difference?
Difficulties with reading and writing have wide-ranging effects beyond academic achievement, including on career opportunities and personal well-being. However, the concept of dyslexia continues to be debated: is the term useful? How does it relate to spoken language?
This lecture describes what is known of the causes and consequences of reading difficulties and how they relate to other common conditions that affect learning. It will look at the importance of early intervention and how best to support children with dyslexia.
Key research papers
Risk factors for dyslexia: addressing oral language deficits (2025)
Maggie Snowling & Charles Hulme
Mind, Brain, and Education
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- Outlines oral language difficulties as a major risk factor of dyslexia.
- Reviews findings of studies of oral language intervention against research that shows language skills are the foundation of learning to read.
- Supports language screening and language intervention as ways to identify at-risk children and improve oral language skills.
- States that the delivery of such screening and intervention programmes depends on educators being adequately trained and supported.
Toward a consensus on dyslexia: findings from a Delphi study (2025)
Julia M. Carroll, Caroline Holden, Philip Kirby, Paul A. Thompson, Margaret J. Snowling, the Dyslexia Delphi Panel
The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
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- Uses a Delphi method to gather expert consensus on how dyslexia should be defined, involving academics, educators, psychologists, and individuals with dyslexia.
- Dyslexia was agreed to be a difficulty in reading and spelling, underpinned by processing challenges, and not solely defined by poor literacy attainment.
- Experts emphasise that dyslexia exists on a continuum of severity and often co-occurs with other neurodevelopmental conditions like ADHD and DLD.
- Reading fluency and spelling difficulties were identified as consistent markers of dyslexia across languages, though manifestations vary depending on linguistic features.
- Concludes with a proposed new definition of dyslexia, aiming to align scientific understanding with practical assessment and educational policy.
Toward a consensus for dyslexia practice: findings of a Delphi study on assessment and identification (2025)
Caroline Holden, Philip Kirby, Margaret J. Snowling, Paul A. Thompson, Julia M. Carroll
Dyslexia
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- Explores consensus in professional practice: why, when, and what to assess.
- Discusses the current assessment context for children with difficulties learning to read, spell, and write.
- Supports the ongoing use of the label dyslexia for persistent impairments in reading fluency and allied difficulties, such as spelling.
- Suggests an assessment framework for the identification of dyslexia.
- In the identification of dyslexia, highlights and discusses areas that require further research.
Do we really need a new definition of dyslexia? A commentary (2024)
Maggie Snowling & Charles Hulme
Annals of Dyslexia
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- We provide a commentary on current debates about the definition of dyslexia.
- We agree with others that dyslexia is best thought of as a dimensional disorder with the best established causal risk factor being a deficit in phonological processing.
- Dyslexia is particularly common in children from families with a history of dyslexia and in children with preschool language difficulties.
- We argue that definitions may differ depending upon their purpose. Traditional discrepancy definitions may be useful for research purposes, but when considering the provision of educational services discrepancy definitions are not useful since all children with reading difficulties require reading intervention regardless of their level of IQ.
Children’s Language Skills Can Be Improved: Lessons from Psychological Science for Educational Policy (2020)
Charles Hulme, Margaret J. Snowling, Gillian West, Arne Lervåg, and Monica Melby-Lervåg
Current Directions in Psychological Science
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- Oral language is essential for social interaction and classroom learning as well as being the foundation for reading comprehension.
- Children with language difficulties are at a higher risk of educational failure.
- Recent studies have demonstrated significant improvements in children’s oral language through targeted language interventions.
- Language interventions can also have positive effects on reading comprehension.
Defining and understanding, dyslexia: past, present and future (2020)
Margaret J. Snowling, Charles Hulme, and Kate Nation
Oxford Review of Education
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- Dyslexia is a difficulty in learning to decode (read aloud) and to spell.
- Initially, dyslexia was considered a specific learning difficulty, meaning it could not be explained in terms of obvious causes such as sensory problems or general learning difficulties.
- Failure to find qualitative differences in reading and phonological skills, between children with dyslexia and children with more general learning problems led this kind of ‘discrepancy’ definition to fall from favour.
- This paper argues that loosening the criteria for dyslexia has influenced common understanding of the condition and led to diagnostic confusion.
Developmental Outcomes for Children at High Risk of Dyslexia and Children With Developmental Language Disorder (2019)
Margaret J. Snowling, Hannah M. Nash, Debbie C. Gooch, Marianna E. Hayiou-Thomas, Charles Hulme, Wellcome Language and Reading Project Team
Child Development
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- We followed children at family risk of dyslexia and children with preschool language difficulties from age 3½, comparing them with controls (N = 234).
- At age 8, children were classified as having dyslexia or Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) and compared at earlier time points with controls.
- Children with dyslexia have specific difficulties with phonology and emergent reading skills in the preschool period, whereas children with DLD, with or without dyslexia, show a wider range of impairments including significant problems with executive and motor tasks.
- For children with both dyslexia and DLD, difficulties with phonology are generally more severe than those observed in children with dyslexia or DLD alone.
- Findings confirm that poor phonology is the major cognitive risk factor for dyslexia.
The Foundations of Literacy Development in Children at Familial Risk of Dyslexia (2015)
Charles Hulme, Hannah M. Nash, Debbie Gooch, Arne Lervåg, and Margaret J. Snowling
Association for Psychological Science
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- The development of reading skills is underpinned by oral language abilities.
- Preschool measures of oral language predict phoneme awareness and grapheme-phoneme knowledge before starting school, which in turn predict word-level literacy skills shortly after school entry.
- Reading comprehension at 8.5 years is predicted by word-level literacy skills at 5.5 years and language skills at 3.5 years.
- The predictive relationships between language skills, literacy skills and reading comprehension are similar for typically developing children and those at risk of literacy difficulties.
- These findings underline the importance of oral language skills for the development of both word-level literacy and reading comprehension.