Dr Hazel Blythe

My research interests are primarily in typical and atypical literacy development in children.  I have a wider interest in children’s cognitive development, particularly in the field of visual cognition.  Specific areas of interest include: 

Phonological processing during reading.  In recent years, I have become particularly interested in readers’ processing of phonological information during reading.  My research in this area has demonstrated phonological recoding – rapid, automated, pre-lexical activation of abstract phonological codes – in children as young as 7 years, in profoundly to severely deaf teenagers, and in teenagers with dyslexia.  Across this series of experiments, the data provide compelling evidence for a robust developmental transition from phonological decoding to recoding.

Children’s eye movements during reading.  This approach has allowed me to examine the influence of linguistic manipulations as well as the time course of visual information extraction, across both English and Finnish. As well as using eye movement data to inform understanding of cognitive processing of language for fixated words, I am also interested in children’s development of parafoveal pre-processing.

Binocular coordination during reading.   I am interested in the coordination of the two eyes during reading, in adults as well as typically and atypically developing children.  My research in this area has included investigation the effects of both visual and linguistic manipulations upon binocular coordination, and the nature and extent of shared retinal inputs that are required for successful reading.  I have also directly examined the question of whether atypical binocular coordination is a causal factor in developmental dyslexia.

Reading in Chinese.  In collaboration with colleagues at Tianjin Normal University, I investigate the role of word spacing in Chinese reading.  Specifically, can Chinese readers benefit from the insertion of word spaces, where such spacing is not usually present; if so, under which circumstances?  To date, we have demonstrated benefits of word spacing to the learning of new words in skilled adult readers, beginning readers, and second language learners.

Word learning during reading.  Vocabulary is an important building block for successful literacy acquisition, and it is clear that there is a tight link between reading and vocabulary; children who receive explicit vocabulary training show improvements in their reading. A substantial proportion of our vocabulary is not explicitly taught to us, but is learned incidentally during silent reading. We encounter words that we do not yet know within a meaningful context, and form a new cognitive representation for those words incrementally over multiple exposures, with that representation becoming more detailed over time  I am interested in the process of word learning during reading, and the factors that influence the efficiency of that process.

• Please visit the Pure Research Information Portal for further information
• Individual Differences in Skilled Reading and the Word Frequency Effect, Lee, C., Godwin, H., Blythe, H., Drieghe, D. Aug 2025, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
• The Impact of Spacing and Exposure Frequency on Eye Movement Control during Learning and Scanning of Pseudowords in Chinese Native Speakers, Wang, M., Blythe, H., Liversedge, S. 6 Sep 2025, In: Reading and Writing
• Eye Movements, Pupillometry, and Cognitive Processes, Liversedge, S., Milledge, S., Blythe, H. Jul 2023, APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology, Washington DC, United States, American Psychological Association
• Phonological Parafoveal Pre-processing in Children Reading English Sentences, Milledge, S., Zang, C., Liversedge, S., Blythe, H. 1 Aug 2022, In: Cognition
• The importance of the first letter in children’s parafoveal preprocessing in English: Is it phonologically or orthographically driven?, Milledge, S., Liversedge, S., Blythe, H. 1 May 2022, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance
• Eye-movement control during learning and scanning of English pseudoword stimuli: Exposure frequency effects and spacing effects in a visual search task, Wang, M., Blythe, H., Liversedge, S. 1 Nov 2021, In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics
• Eye-movement control during learning and scanning of Landolt-C stimuli: Exposure frequency effects and spacing effects in a visual search task, Wang, M., Blythe, H., Liversedge, S. 1 Aug 2021, In: Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics
• Parafoveal Pre-processing in Children reading English: The Importance of External Letters, Milledge, S., Blythe, H., Liversedge, S. 1 Feb 2021, In: Psychonomic Bulletin and Review
• The influence of children’s reading ability on initial letter position encoding during a reading-like task., Pagán, A., Blythe, H., Liversedge, S. 1 Jul 2021, In: Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning Memory and Cognition
• The role of phonology in lexical access in teenagers with a history of dyslexia, Blythe, H., Dickins, J., Kennedy, C., Liversedge, S. 17 Mar 2020, In: PLoS One

Emily Bellerby Reading to Learn: The Blue Toofle Had Long Legs Start Date: 01/10/2021 End Date: 20/12/2025

• Psychology MA
• Psychology PhD
• Psychology BSc (Hons)
• Chartered Psychologist CPsychol.