Rayner to Receive 2014 William James Fellow Award

APS Fellow Keith Rayner, known widely for his modern eye-tracking methodology in reading and visual perception, has been named a 2014 APS William James Fellow Award recipient for his contributions to the basic science of psychology. Rayner will give his award address, discussing how culture, writing systems, and age influence our reading, at the 26th APS Annual Convention, which will be held May 22–25, 2014, in San Francisco.

Rayner heads the Rayner Eyetracking Lab and is the Atkinson Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses on recording eye movements during reading and covers a wide variety of cognitive processes, ranging from language comprehension to scene perception.

In his work, Rayner has found that the best way to teach children to learn to read is through phonics and other techniques that emphasize the alphabetic principle. His research also challenged the idea, originally promoted by a hoax, that reading words with jumbled letters is just as easy as reading correctly spelled words.