Gene P. Ouellette

Gene P. Ouellette is a psychologist and literacy researcher whose work focuses on how children learn to read, spell, and develop vocabulary. He is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, where he directs the Language, Literacy, Learning Lab and conducts research on reading acquisition, invented spelling, and the cognitive processes that support literacy development. He serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology.

Ouellette is the co-author, with J. Richard Gentry, of Brain Words: How the Science of Reading Informs Teaching, which presents a research-based framework for understanding how spelling, sound, and meaning are stored as “brain words” to support fluent reading and writing. He has received multi-year research funding from Canadian federal agencies including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and has published empirical work on topics such as invented spelling as a predictor of later reading skills.