Anderson-Myers Colloquium Series | Dr. Ioulia Kovelman

The Anderson-Myers Colloquium Series is delighted to welcome Dr. Ioulia Kovelman from the University of Michigan on Thursday, May 8th, from 12:00–1:30 pm in the Commonwealth Honors College Event Hall West.

Talk Title: The Bilingual Reading Brain: Cross-Linguistic Perspectives on Child Literacy

Dr. Kovelman’s talk will explore how learning to read shapes the developing brain in bilingual children, comparing Spanish-English and Chinese-English learners to reveal shared and language-specific effects on reading development, language comprehension, and dyslexia.

Light refreshments will be provided.

Dr. Kovelman is a Professor of Psychology and a developmental cognitive neuroscientist specializing in child language and literacy development, with a focus on bilingual children. Using functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS), her research explores how language, literacy, and brain development intersect in both typically developing readers and at-risk learners, including those with dyslexia and developmental language disorders (DLD). Her current work examines how bilingualism in Spanish, English, and Chinese shapes reading development and dyslexia, shedding light on universal and language-specific influences. You can learn more about her work at the Language & Literacy Lab – University of Michigan Department of Psychology.

The Daniel R. Anderson and Jerome L. Myers Colloquium Series is funded by a generous donation from their students, Robert and Elizabeth Lorch, to honor the scholarship of these two UMass Amherst distinguished professors emeriti. The goal of the series is to bring in prominent scholars whose research has revolutionized their field of study at the intersection of developmental and cognitive psychology.