معرفی
Jennifer Gross serves as Professor of Psycholinguistics and Applied Cognition in the Psychology Department at Grand Valley State University's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her research focuses on the intersection of language processing, cognitive development, and reading comprehension across diverse age groups.
Her primary research interests examine how prosody sensitivity—the perception of speech rhythm and stress patterns—impacts reading abilities from early childhood through adulthood. Key investigations include:
- Prosody's role in reading fluency for 5-6 year olds
- Lexical prosody effects on third-grade comprehension
- Prosodic production in high school reading
- Adult reading comprehension mechanisms
- Development of rhythm-enhanced text applications for struggling readers
Her research demonstrates consistent patterns where prosody awareness predicts reading outcomes across developmental stages, even after controlling for phonological awareness and working memory. Current work focuses on a prosody training app featuring 'Prosody Pup' that transforms text with stylistic stress markers to cultivate rhythm sensitivity.
Award highlights:
- Pew Teaching Excellence Award (2001)
- Pew Teaching with Technology Award (2011)
Gross directs the GVSU Applied Cognition Lab (appliedcognitionlab@gvsu.edu), where her team investigates text rhythm visualization techniques. Her teaching portfolio includes foundational courses like PSY 101 and specialized offerings such as PSY 357 (Psychology of Language) and HNR 313 (Language in Cognitive Science).
The lab's innovative prosody training application represents a practical intervention for beginning readers, struggling readers, and English language learners through explicit stress-marking in written text.
