The Cognition Clinic for Reading is now open to the public, on the ground floor of the Australian Hearing Hub.

“Our clinic’s aim is to help people with a range of reading and spelling difficulties, and their supporters,” said Genevieve McArthur.

“We help people directly by providing comprehensive assessments and evidence based advice about treatments. At the same time, we know we can’t help everybody so we are running professional development workshops for teachers, clinicians, volunteers – we’ve had a few grandparents who are hoping to help their grandchildren, for example.”

The clinic emerged from research within the Department of Cognitive Science and the ARC Centre for Cognition and its Disorders, and a need to think outside the box for research funding.

Research into reading difficulties typically falls in a grey area between traditional ARC and NHMRC funding categories, so Genevieve’s team proposed a model whereby their next generation studies could be supported by a not-for-profit public clinic.

“We have a circular relationship with research projects and the clinic – we will help researchers recruit and manage their participants, and in return, if those projects work we will integrate the findings of those projects into our practice. It’s a really immediate feedback loop.”

“Eventually, when people contact us and we give them an assessment, we’ll be able to say: here are your evidence based treatment options, however you might want to pursue a new research trial instead. We can’t guarantee it’s going to work, but it’s free!”

The clinic is also a unique place to nurture young professionals, like Erin Banales who is currently finalising her PhD investigating the relationship between reading difficulties and verbal memory problems.

“I really love working with kids, and the best bit about my PhD was getting to do a treatment case study, with kids I got to see almost every day for eight months,” said Erin. “Getting to see the effect of treatment was amazing, and now I’m getting to do that in the clinic as well. I’d really like to see the clinic take off and for us to be able to continue to develop new treatments.”

The clinic is just one of many updates from the Australian Hearing Hub. “It’s a brilliant facility with lots of cross talk,” said Genevieve. “For example, staff will pop downstairs looking for advice about a reading test. Or we will pop downstairs to seek advice from the Centre of Emotional health about how to support the self-esteem of poor readers. Personal contact is an important trigger for innovation in cutting-edge research and practice.”

Find out more about the Cognition Clinic for Reading.