Brett Louis Kessler

WWW:	http://spell.psychology.wustl.edu/bkessler.html; https://pages.wustl.edu/kessler
Citizenship:	USA
ORCID:	0000-0001-5759-0193

Academic Positions

2015–
Washington University, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Associate Professor Emeritus of Psychology.
2014–
Washington University, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences. Research Scientist.
2012–2014
Washington University, Department of Psychology. Associate Professor of Psychology and of Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Linguistics Program.
2005–2012.
Washington University, Department of Psychology. Assistant Professor of Psychology and of Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology, Linguistics Program.
2002–2005
Washington University, Department of Psychology. Research Scientist.

Education

1999–2002
Postdoctoral Research Fellow. Wayne State University, Psychology. Advisor: Rebecca Treiman.
1999
PhD, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University.
Dissertation title: Estimating the Probability of Historical Connections Between Languages.
Committee: Paul Kiparsky (advisor), Edward Flemming, Jarrett Rosenberg, Thomas Wasow.
1993
AM, Department of Linguistics, Stanford University.
Thesis title: External Sandhi in Classical Sanskrit.
Committee: William Poser (advisor), Andrew Garrett, Paul Kiparsky.
1984
MS, Computer Science, School of Informatics and Computing, Indiana University, Bloomington.
1979
MLS, School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington.
1977
BA, Linguistics and Germanic Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington.

Honors and Awards

2019–
Co–principal investigator, with Rebecca Treiman. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development as project 5R01HD102346-03, “Learning statistical orthographic patterns in disyllabic English words and using them in reading and spelling.”
2014–2019
Co–principal investigator, with Rebecca Treiman. National Science Foundation award 1421279. “Preschoolers’ Use of Statistical Learning to Discover Spelling and Reading Conventions Prior to Formal Schooling.”
2011
Senior Visiting Scientist, Marie-Curie Initial Training Network project ELDEL, “Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages,” Bangor, Wales, and Prague, Czechia.
2010
Arts & Sciences Faculty Award, ArtSci Council, Washington University.
2009
Senior Visiting Scientist, Marie-Curie Initial Training Network project ELDEL, “Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages,” Bangor, Wales, and Clermont-Ferrand, France.
2007-2013
With Rebecca Treiman, PI. National Institutes of Health grant R01HD051610-02. “Children’s Early Knowledge of Letters and Spelling Across Languages.”
2007
Keynote speaker, meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics Special Interest Group in Computational Morphology and Phonology, Prague
2006–
With Rebecca Treiman. The March of Dimes grant 12-FY06-235, “Spelling in Deaf Children With Very Early Cochlear Implants.”
2003–2006
With Rebecca Treiman. The March of Dimes grant 12-FY03-40, “Spelling in Deaf Children.”
2002–2006
With Rebecca Treiman. National Science Foundation Award 0130763, “Statistical Bases of Reading and Spelling.”
2001
National Science Foundation travel award for NATO Advanced Study Institute: Literacy Acquisition, Assessment, & Intervention: The Role of Phonology, Orthography, and Morphology (Italy, Nov. 2001).
1996–1997
Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation grant.
1993–1996
Stanford University fellowship.
1977
Graduation from Indiana University with highest distinction, Honors in Linguistics.
1977
Phi Beta Kappa.
1973–1977
Indiana University Merit Scholarship
1973
Hoosier Scholar Award. Benjamin and Anna Bosse Scholarship.

Peer-Reviewed Publications

In press. Treiman, Rebecca & Rosales, Nicole & Cusner, Lauren & Kessler, Brett. Cues to stress in English spelling Journal of Memory and Language.

Treiman, Rebecca & Caravolas, Markéta & Kessler, Brett. 2019. What methods of scoring young children’s spelling best predict later spelling performance? Journal of Research in Reading 42(1). 80–96. (10.1111/1467-9817.12241)

Treiman, Rebecca & Cardoso-Martins, Cláudia & Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Kessler, Brett. 2019. Statistical learning and spelling: Evidence from Brazilian prephonological spellers. Cognition 182. 25–30. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2018.08.016)

Treiman, Rebecca & Decker, Kristina & Kessler, Brett. 2019. Adults’ sensitivity to graphotactic differences within the English vocabulary. Applied Psycholinguistics 40(1). 167–182. (https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716418000516)

Treiman, Rebecca & Hulslander, Jacqueline & Olson, Richard Kellogg & Willcutt, Erik G. & Byrne, Brian & Kessler, Brett. 2019. The unique role of early spelling in the prediction of later literacy performance. Scientific Studies of Reading. (Advanced online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2019.1573242)

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2019. Development of context-sensitive pronunciation in reading: The case of ‹c› and ‹g›. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 182. 114–125. (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2019.02.001)

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Boland, Kelly & Clocksin, Hayley & Chen, Zhengdao. 2018. Statistical learning and spelling: Older prephonological spellers produce more wordlike spellings than younger prephonological spellers. Child Development 89(4). e431–e443. (https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12893)

Lyovin, Anatole & Kessler, Brett & William R. Leben. 2017. An introduction to the languages of the world. 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2016. Choosing between alternative spellings of sounds: The role of context. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 42(7). 1154–1159. (https://doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000225)

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Decker, Kristin & Pollo, Tatiana Cury. 2016. How do prephonological writers link written words to their objects? Cognitive Development. 38. 89–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2016.02.002

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Byrne, Brian & Olson, Richard K. 2016. Measures of kindergarten spelling and their relations to later spelling performance. Scientific Studies of Reading. (Advance online publication.) https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2016.1186168

Treiman, Rebecca & Rosales, Nicole & Kessler, Brett. 2016. Characteristics of print in books for preschool children. Writing Systems Research. 8(1). 120–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2015.1074058

Kemp, Nenagh & Treiman, Rebecca & Blackley, Hollie & Svoboda, Imogen & Kessler, Brett. 2015. Lexical classification and spelling: Do people use atypical spellings for atypical pseudowords? Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 28(8). 1187–1202. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-015-9567-y

Kessler, Brett. 2015. Computational and quantitative approaches to historical phonology. In Honeybone, Patrick & Salmons, Joseph (eds.), The Oxford handbook of historical phonology, 133–148. Oxford: Oxford Univiversity Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232819.013.030

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2015. Writing systems: Their properties and implications for reading. In Pollatsek, Alexander & Treiman, Rebecca (eds.), The Oxford handbook of reading. New York: Oxford University Press. (Advance online publication.) https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199324576.013.1

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2015. Uma revisão crítica de três perspectivas sobre o desenvolvimento da escrita [A critical review of three perspectives on spelling development]. Estudos de Psicologia (Campinas). 32(3). 449–459. https://doi.org/10.1590/0103-166X2015000300010

Treiman, Rebecca & Decker, Kristina & Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury. 2015. Variation and repetition in the spelling of young children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 132. 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2014.12.008

Treiman, Rebecca & Mulqueeny, Kevin & Kessler, Brett. 2015. Young children’s knowledge about the spatial layout of writing. Writing Systems Research. 7(2). 235–244. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2014.924386

Treiman, Rebecca & Seidenberg, Mark S. & Kessler, Brett. 2015. Influences on spelling: Evidence from homophones. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience. 30(5). 544–554. https://doi.org/10.1080/23273798.2014.952315

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2014. How children learn to write words. New York: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199907977.001.0001

Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Cardoso-Martins, Cláudia. 2013. Frequency analyses of prephonological spellings as predictors of success in conventional spelling. Journal of Learning Disabilities 46(3). 252–259. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022219412449440

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2013. Learning to use an alphabetic writing system. Language Learning and Development. 9(4). 317–330. https://doi.org/10.1080/15475441.2013.812016

Treiman, Rebecca & Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Cardoso-Martins, Cláudia & Brett Kessler. 2013. Do young children spell words syllabically? Evidence from learners of Brazilian Portuguese. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 116(4). 873–890. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2013.08.002

Treiman, Rebecca & Levin, Iris & Kessler, Brett. 2012. Linking the shapes of alphabet letters to their sounds: The case of Hebrew. Reading and Writing. 25(2). 569–585. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9286-3

Hayes, Heather & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2011. Spelling of deaf children who use cochlear implants. Scientific Studies of Reading. 15(6). 522–540. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2010.528480

Kessler, Brett. 2011. Language families. In Hogan, Patrick Colm (ed.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of the language sciences, 414–417. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2011. Similarities among the shapes of writing and their effects on learning. Written Language and Literacy. 14(1). 39–57. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.14.1.03tre

Ellefson, Michelle R. & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2009. Learning to label letters by sounds or names: A comparison of England and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 102(3). 323–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.05.008

Kessler, Brett. 2009. Statistical learning of conditional orthographic correspondences. Writing Systems Research 1(1). 19–34. https://doi.org/10.1093/wsr/wsp004.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2009. Statistical patterns in children’s early writing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 104(4). 410–426. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2009.07.003

Kessler, Brett. 2008. The mathematical assessment of long-range linguistic relationships. Language and Linguistics Compass. 2(5). 821–839. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818x.2008.00083.x

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca & Mullennix, John. 2008. Feedback-consistency effects in single-word reading. In Grigorenko, Elena L. & Naples, Adam J. (eds.), Single-word reading: Behavioral and biological perspectives, 159−174. New York: Erlbaum.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2008. Preschoolers use partial letter names to select spellings: Evidence from Portuguese. Applied Psycholinguistics. 29(2). 195–212. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716407080095

Balota, David A. & Yap, Melvin J. & Cortese, Michael J. & Hutchison, Keith A. & Kessler, Brett & Loftis, Bjorn … & Treiman, Rebecca. 2007. The English Lexicon Project. Behavior Research Methods. 39(3). 445−459. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193014

Kessler, Brett. 2007. Word similarity metrics and multilateral comparison. In Nerbonne, John & Ellison, Mark T. & Kondrak, Grzegorz (eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth Meeting of the ACL Special Interest Group on Computational Morphology and Phonology (SIGMORPHON), Prague, Czech Republic, 6–14. Stroudsburg: Association for Computational Linguistics.

Denning, Keith & Kessler, Brett & Leben, William R. 2007. English vocabulary elements. 2nd edn. New York: Oxford University Press.

Garabík, Radovan & Caravolas, Markéta & Kessler, Brett & Höflerová, Eva & Masterson, Jackie & Mikulajová, Marína & Szczerbiński, Marcin & Wierzchoń, Piotr. 2007. A cross-linguistic database of children’s printed words in three Slavic languages. In Levická, Jana & Garabík, Radovan (eds.), Computer Treatment of Slavic and East European Languages: Fourth International Seminar, Bratislava, Slovakia, 25−27 October 2007: Proceedings, 51−64. Bratislava: Tribun.

Treiman, Rebecca & Cohen, Jeremy & Mulqueeny, Kevin & Kessler, Brett & Schechtman, Suzanne. 2007. Young children’s knowledge about printed names. Child Development. 78(5). 1458−1471. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2007.01077.x

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Evans, Rochelle. 2007. Anticipatory conditioning of spelling-to-sound translation. Journal of Memory and Language. 56(2). 229−245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.06.001

Treiman, Rebecca & Levin, Iris & Kessler, Brett. 2007. Learning of letter names follows similar principles across languages: Evidence from Hebrew. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 96. 87−106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2006.08.002

Ashby, Jane & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Rayner, Keith. 2006. Vowel processing during silent reading: Evidence from eye movements. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. 32(2). 416–424. https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.32.2.416

Bourassa, Derrick C. & Treiman, Rebecca & Brett Kessler. 2006. Use of morphology in spelling by children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Memory & Cognition. 34(3). 703–714. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193589

Hayes, Heather & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2006. Children use vowels to help them spell consonants. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 94(1). 27–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.11.001

Kessler, Brett & Lehtonen, Annukka. 2006. Multilateral comparison and significance testing of the Indo-Uralic question. In Forster, Peter & Renfrew, Colin (eds.), Phylogenetic methods and the prehistory of languages, 33–42. Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2006. Spelling as statistical learning: Using consonantal context to spell vowels. Journal of Educational Psychology. 98(3). 642–652. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.98.3.642

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury. 2006. Learning about the letter name subset of the vocabulary: Evidence from U.S. and Brazilian preschoolers. Applied Psycholinguistics. 27(2). 211–227. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716406060255

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Zevin, Jason D. & Bick, Suzanne & Davis, Melissa. 2006. Influence of consonantal context on the reading of vowels: Evidence from children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 93(1). 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.06.008

Caravolas, Markéta & Brett Kessler & Charles Hulme & Margaret Snowling. 2005. Effects of orthographic consistency, frequency, and letter knowledge on children’s vowel spelling development. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 92(4). 307–321. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.08.001

Cassar, Marie & Treiman, Rebecca & Moats, Louisa & Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Kessler, Brett. 2005. How do the spellings of children with dyslexia compare with those of nondyslexic children? Reading and Writing. 18(1). 27–49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-004-2345-x

Kessler, Brett. 2005. Phonetic comparison algorithms. Transactions of the Philological Society. 103(2). 243–260. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-968X.2005.00153.x

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2005. Vowels, syllables, and letter names: Differences between young children’s spelling in English and Portuguese. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology. 92(2). 161–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.01.006

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2004. The case of case: Children’s knowledge and use of upper- and lowercase letters. Applied Psycholinguistics. 25(3). 413–428. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716404001195

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2003. Is English spelling chaotic? Misconceptions concerning its irregularity. Reading Psychology. 24(3–4). 267–289. https://doi.org/10.1080/02702710390227228

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Bick, Suzanne. 2003. Influence of consonantal context on the pronunciation of vowels: A comparison of human readers and computational models. Cognition. 88(1). 49–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00003-9

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca & Mullennix, John. 2002. Phonetic biases in voice key response time measurements. Journal of Memory and Language. 47(1). 145–171. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2001.2835

Treiman, Rebecca, & Kessler, Brett & Bick, Suzanne. 2002. Context sensitivity in the spelling of English vowels. Journal of Memory and Language. 47(3). 448–468. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(02)00010-4

Kessler, Brett. 2001. The significance of word lists: Statistical tests for investigating historical connections between languages. Stanford: CSLI Publications. (ISBN 9781575863009.)

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2001. Relationships between sounds and letters in English monosyllables. Journal of Memory and Language 44(4). 592–617. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.2000.2745

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Bourassa, Derrick. 2001. Children’s own names influence their spelling. Applied Psycholinguistics. 22(4). 555–570. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716401004040

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Knewasser, Stephanie & Tincoff, Ruth & Bowman, Margo. 2000. English speakers’ sensitivity to phonotactic patterns. In Broe, Michael B. & Pierrehumbert, Janet B. (eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the Lexicon, 269–282. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kessler, Brett & Nunberg, Geoffrey & Schütze, Hinrich. 1997. Automatic detection of text genre. In 35th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics and 8th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Proceedings of the conference, 7–12 July, Madrid, 32–38. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 1997. Syllable structure and the distribution of phonemes in English syllables. Journal of Memory and Language. 37(3). 295–311. https://doi.org/10.1006/jmla.1997.2522

Kessler, Brett. 1995. Computational dialectology in Irish Gaelic. In Proceedings of the seventh conference of the European chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics (EACL), 60–66. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 1995. In defense of an onset–rhyme syllable structure for English. Language and Speech. 38(2). 127–142. https://doi.org/10.1177/002383099503800201

Kessler, Brett. 1994. Sandhi and syllables in Classical Sanskrit. In Duncan, Eric & Farkas, Donka & Spaelti, Philip (eds.), The proceedings of the Twelfth West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 35–50. Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Kessler, Brett & Shaw, Debora. 1983. SOLOS: A student-oriented information retrieval system using MARC records. Information Technology and Libraries. 2. 272–279.

Other Publications

Kessler, Brett. 2015. Response to Kassian et al., “Proto-Indo-European–Uralic comparison from the probabilistic point of view.” Journal of Indo-European Studies. 43(3). 357–367.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2008. Three perspectives on spelling development. In Grigorenko, E. L. & Naples, A. J. (eds.), Single-word reading: Behavioral and biological perspectives, 175−189. New York: Erlbaum.

Kessler, Brett. 2007. [Review of the book Language classification by numbers, by April McMahon & Robert McMahon]. Anthropological Linguistics. 49(3–4). 435–438.

Treiman, Rebecca & Brett Kessler. 2007. Learning to read. In Gaskell, M. Gareth (ed.), The Oxford handbook of psycholinguistics, 657−666. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198568971.013.0040

Hayes, Heather & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2005. English spelling: Making sense of a seemingly chaotic writing system. The International Dyslexia Association Perspectives on Language and Literacy. 31(3). 8–10.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2005. Writing systems and spelling development. In Snowling, Margaret J. & Hulme, Charles (eds.), The Science of reading: A handbook, 120–134. Oxford: Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470757642.ch7

Kessler, Brett. 2003. [Review of the book Time depth in historical linguistics, by Colin Renfrew, April McMahon, and Larry Trask (eds.)]. Diachronica 20(2). 375–379. https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.20.2.11kes

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2003. The role of letter names in the acquisition of literacy. In Kail, Robert V. (ed.), Advances in child development and behavior, vol. 31, 105–135. San Diego: Academic Press.

Nunberg, Geoffrey D. & Pedersen, Jan O. & Schütze, Hinrich & Kessler, Brett & Grefenstette, Gregory. 1999. Text genre identification. European Patent EP 0 889 417. London: European Patent Office.

Presentations

Caravolas, Markéta & Kessler, Brett. 2016. Developmental spelling profiles of children learning consistent and inconsistent orthographies: Measurement matters. (Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Porto, July 13–16.)

Treiman, Rebecca & Decker, Kristina & Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury. 2015. Variation and repetition in the spelling of young children. (Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Kohala Coast, HI, 15–18 July 2015.)

Kemp, Nenagh & Blackley, Hollie & Cure, Imogen & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2012. Spelling pseudowords: The effects of task instructions and wordlikeness. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Montréal, July.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury, & Cardoso-Martins, Cláudia & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2012. The structure of prephonological writing as an indicator of later spelling success. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Montréal, July.

Kessler, Brett. 2012. Measuring the spelling abilities of pre-spellers. Paper presented at the Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, February.

Kemp, Nenagh & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2011. Adults’ spelling of doubled consonants in pseudowords. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), St. Pete Beach, July.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Cardoso-Martins, Cláudia & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2011. A longitudinal evaluation of the syllabic spelling hypothesis in Portuguese. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), St. Pete Beach, July.

Kessler, Brett. 2011. Automated assessment of spelling in alphabetic orthographies. Paper presented at the meeting of ELDEL (Enhancing Literacy Development in European Languages), Prague, June.

Kessler, Brett. 2011. The significance of Ongan. Paper presented at the Colloquium of the Linguistics Department, University of California, Berkeley, March.

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2010. The course of implicit learning of adjacent and distant contextual statistics as evidence in the decoding of ambiguous English letters. Paper presented at the Pre-Psychonomics Visual Word Recognition Miniconference, St. Louis, November.

Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Byrne, Brian & Olson, Richard K. 2010. Predicting spelling accuracy to Grade 2 by computer analysis of erroneous spellings in kindergarten. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Berlin, July.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Rosenzweig, Emily. 2010. Children’s initial spelling strategies: ‘Bear’ is not bigger than ‘mosquito’. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Berlin, July.

Kessler, Brett. 2009. Quantifying reading and spelling consistency. Paper presented at a workshop of ELDEL, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, June.

Kessler, Brett. 2009. Searching lexical databases. Tutorial presented at a workshop of ELDEL, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, June.

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2009. Learning about the role of context in spelling-to-sound translation: The case of initial ‹c› and ‹g› in English. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Boston, June.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2009. Do children’s prephonological writing patterns predict later spelling performance? Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Boston, June.

Treiman, Rebecca & Brett Kessler & Caravolas, Markéta. 2009, June. Children’s knowledge about the shapes of Latin letters. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Boston, MA.

Kessler, Brett. 2009. The developmental course of sensitivity to context in reading. Paper presented at the Language, Development, and Cognition colloquium, Bangor University, Wales, May.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2008. Letter shapes and how they are learned. Paper presented at the International Workshop on Writing Systems, Braunschweig, September.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2008. The nature of young children’s nonphonological spellings. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Asheville, July.

Kessler, Brett. 2007. Better than chance? Randomization models for evaluating whether lexical similarity implies historical connection. Paper presented at the Workshop on Alternative Approaches to Language Classification, Stanford, July.

Ellefson, Michelle R. & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2007. Learning to label letters by names or sounds. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), Boston, March.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2006. How do preschoolers use letter names to select spellings? Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Vancouver, July.

Treiman, Rebecca & Cohen, Jeremy & Mulqueeny, Kevin & Kessler, Brett & Schechtman, Suzanne. 2006. Young children’s knowledge about printed names. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Vancouver, July.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2005. Variability in spelling-to-sound translation. Paper presented at the Perspectives on Linguistic Variation workshop, Washington University in St. Louis, November.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2005. Long-distance anticipatory effects in spelling-to-sound translation. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Toronto, November.

Ashby, Jane & Treiman, Rebecca & Kesslerm Brett & Rayner, Keith. 2005. How are vowels processed during silent reading? Paper presented at the European Conference on Eye Movements (ECEM), Bern, August.

Bourassa, Derrick C. & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2005. Use of morphology in spelling by children with dyslexia and typically developing children. Poster presented at the meeting of the Canadian Society for Brain, Behaviour and Cognitive Science (CSBBCS), Montréal, July.

Hayes, Heather & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2005. Children use vowels to help them spell consonants. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Toronto, June.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2005. Beginning spellers exploit inexact letter-name matches. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Toronto, June.

Treiman, Rebecca & Brett Kessler, Brett & Pollo, Tatiana Cury. 2005. U.S. and Brazilian preschoolers’ knowledge of letter names: Variability across letters, languages, and children. Paper presented at the symposium Cross-cultural Approaches to Language and Literacy Development, conducted at the meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD), Atlanta, April.

Kessler, Brett. 2005. Verifying historical relationships between groups of languages. Paper presented at Mathematical Modelling and Analysis of Language Diversification, Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, Harvard University, Cambridge, March.

Kessler, Brett. 2005, January. Is English really related to Finnish? Adapting psychological research methods to solve linguistic puzzles. Paper presented at the colloquium of the Department of Psychology, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, January.

Ashby, Jane & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Martin, Andrea E. & Rayner, Keith. 2004. The minimality principle reconsidered: Evidence for the early use of elaborated phonological representations during silent reading. Poster presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Minneapolis, November.

Caravolas, Markéta & Margaret J. Snowling & Charles Hulme & Brett Kessler. 2004. How orthographic consistency affects the development of spelling skills in English: Implications for theories of orthographic learning. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Amsterdam, June.

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2004. Sensitivity to statistical contextual patterns when spelling consonants in English. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Amsterdam, June.

Pollo, Tatiana Cury & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2004. Influence of writing systems on young children’s spelling in English and Portuguese. Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Amsterdam, June.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 2004. The case of case: Children’s knowledge and use of upper- and lower-case letters. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Amsterdam, June.

Ashby, Jane & Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Rayner, Keith. 2003. Parafoveal processing of vowel contexts: Evidence from eye movements. Poster presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Vancouver, November.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett & Bick, Suzanne & Davis, Melissa. 2003. Influence of consonantal context on the pronunciation of vowels: Evidence from children. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Vancouver, November.

Kessler, Brett. 2003. Multilateral comparison and the problem of chance resemblances. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Denver, February.

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca & Bick, Suzanne. 2002. Use by skilled spellers of context-sensitive patterns: Onsets and codas constrain the spelling of English vowels. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR), Chicago, June.

Kessler, Brett. 2002. Sensitivity to intrasyllabic context in human and computer processing of letter–phoneme correspondences. Paper presented at California State University, Fresno, March.

Kessler, Brett. 2002. Sensitivity to intrasyllabic context in human and computer processing of letter–phoneme correspondences. Paper presented at the Beckman Institute, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, March.

Kessler, Brett. 2001. Determining the statistical significance of sound correspondences. Paper presented at the Tenth Annual Workshop on Comparative Linguistics Reconstruction Fundamentals, Detroit, November.

Kessler, Brett. 2001. Factors that affect oral word reading. Paper presented at the NATO Advanced Study Institute Literacy Acquisition, Assessment, and Intervention: The Role of Phonology, Orthography, and Morphology. Barga, November.

Kessler, Brett & Treiman, Rebecca. 2000. Relationships between sounds and letters in English monosyllables. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, New Orleans, November.

Kessler, Brett. 1999. When do lexical resemblances mean that languages are historically connected? Paper presented at Wayne State University, Detroit, November.

Kessler, Brett. 1998, May. Estimating the probability of historical connections between languages using recurrent sound correspondences. Paper presented at the Phonetics and Phonology Workshop, Stanford University.

Kessler, Brett. 1995, January. The phonotactics of English CVC monosyllables. Phonetics and Phonology Workshop, Stanford, CA.

Treiman, Rebecca & Kessler, Brett. 1994. Distributions of phonemes in English CVC words and implications for language processing. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, November.

Kessler, Brett. 1993. Sandhi in Sanskrit. Paper presented at the Phonetics and Phonology Workshop, Stanford University, January.

Kessler, Brett. 1992. A spelling corrector for English based on knowledge of sound-spelling correspondence. Paper presented at SRI International, Menlo Park.

Professional Service

2008. Program committee, Midwest Computational Linguistics Colloquium

Ad hoc reviewer for:

Departmental and University Service

2009
For Linguistics Program, wrote Senior Honors Thesis guidelines. Cowrote extended guidelines for majors and minors, for Web site and Arts and Sciences Bulletin.
2008–2014
Served as director of undergraduate studies and academic coordinator for the Washington University Linguistics Program.
2008
Helped design the Washington University academic major in Linguistics, which was approved in Fall, 2008.
2005−2014
Academic advisor for Linguistics and the Philosophy−Neuroscience−Psychology program at Washington University
2005−2013
Coordinator for the Linguistics program for University College and Summer School, Washington University.
2005−2013
Redesigned and maintained Web site for the Washington University Linguistics program.
2008
Selection committee, Undergraduate Honors Fellowship, College of Arts and Sciences.
1993–1997
Member, Committee on Graduate Studies, Stanford University Dept. of Linguistics.
1995–1996
Stanford University Linguistics Department graduate student representative.
1994–1995
Member, Linguistics Colloquium Committee, Stanford University.

Other Professional Experience

2002–2008
Linguistic Computation Consultant. Lexicon Branding, Sausalito.
1996–1998
Consultant. Automatic Genre Recognition project. Palo Alto Research Center.
1986–1993
Software Engineer. Natural Language Project, Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto.
1984–1986
Prototype designer. Development Operations and Artificial Intelligence, Xerox, Palo Alto.
1979–1981
Programmer/Analyst and Cataloging Librarian. Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

Teaching

Languages of the World
Historical and Comparative Linguistics
Introduction to Computational Linguistics
Introduction to Linguistics
Phonetics
Writing Systems of the World
Computational Syntax (tutorial)
Introduction to Language Change
The Structure of English Words
Pascal (Computer programming)

Graduate Students

2013 Shoko Otake, master’s thesis committee
2011 Siti Syuhada Binte Faizal, master’s thesis committee
2010 Krista Taake, master’s thesis committee
2009 Heather Hayes, doctoral dissertation committee
2008 Tatiana Pollo, doctoral dissertation committee
2007 Rachel Asquith, master’s thesis committee

Undergraduate Students

2014 Ruth Altmiller, senior honors thesis in Linguistics: Dialectology of country music.
2012 Shelby Strong, senior honors thesis in Linguistics: Too cute for words: An investigation of prosody’s role in the construction of aegyo as a speech style
2012 Xia Yinghui, independent research: Automatic classification of formal and informal text
2010 Sarah Brooks, senior honors thesis in Linguistics: Statistical evaluation of language relatedness using phonetic comparison algorithms.
2009 Leah Szeftel, senior honors thesis in Linguistics: Spelling in deaf children who wear cochlear implants: Do spelling errors reflect pronunciation errors?
2008–2009 Laura Kelly, independent research. Framing, recession, and decision making
2008–2009 Emily Rosenzweig, Mind-Brain-Behavior research: Are Children’s Spellings Influenced by Physical Characteristics of the Object They Are Spelling?
2008 Michelle Palmer, independent research capstone in Linguistics and Semitic Languages Special Major: Sociolinguistics of [h] in Modern Hebrew
2006–2007 Linda Bravman, Mind-Brain-Behavior research. Influence of Affix Origin on Selecting Sound-to-Letter Correspondences in English.
Second advisor for honors theses in Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology: Bradley Matherne (2010); Kenneth Hofmeister, Alex Singal (2011); Emily Cokorinos, Olivia Frosch (2012); Rebecca Marks, Michael Murray, Teresa Yao (2013), Kathryn Cordiano (2014).