The John Damien Lecture 2018

25 Sep 2018, 7.30PM–9.00PM
Logie Lecture Theatre
The John Damien Lecture 2018

Join us on campus as Professor Susan E. Gathercole FBA OBE delivers our 2018 John Damien Lecture with ‘Understanding the dimensions of developmental disorders of learning’.

Many impairments of cognition and learning are common in childhood, with between 5 and 10% of children struggling to acquire language, to learn to read effectively and to become mathematically skilled. A similar proportion of children have ADHD. Despite differences in their learning profiles and in their diagnoses, these children share many similar cognitive and behavioural symptoms. We have investigated why this might be in a research clinic attended by 750 children receiving support from health and education services for their problems. This lecture will summarise key findings relating to the core cognitive and behavioural dimensions that underpin learning difficulties and ADHD in this sample, and some of their neural characteristics. The data illustrate the value of focussing on dimensions of strengths and weaknesses rather than categorical diagnoses to help support the struggling learner.

This lecture is free to attend and is open to all but we ask that you please register online in advance via Eventbrite.

Susan E. Gathercole

Professor Susan E. Gathercole FBA OBE is a cognitive psychologist with interests in memory and learning including the causes of specific learning difficulties in children and how they might be overcome.

She has held academic posts at Oxford, Lancaster, Bristol, Durham, York and Cambridge universities, and since 2011 has been Director of the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge.

Current projects examine the cognitive mechanisms of working memory and how they might be modified through training, and investigate through a new research clinic the dimensions of cognitive and brain that are often impaired in children with problems in attention, learning and memory.

Susan became a Fellow of the British Academy in 2014 and was awarded an OBE for services to psychology and education in 2016. In 2017 she has been appointed Chair of the Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience sub-panel for the 2021 REF.