Marilyn J. Adams

Marilyn Jager Adams, Ph.D., is a cognitive and developmental psychologist and leading expert in early literacy and reading acquisition. She received her Ph.D. in cognitive and developmental psychology from Brown University in 1975 and has served as a visiting scholar at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and in the Department of Cognitive, Linguistic, and Psychological Sciences at Brown University. Her research focuses on literacy acquisition, phonemic awareness, and the development of instructional materials and educational technology, and she was awarded the American Educational Research Association’s Sylvia Scribner Award in 1995 for outstanding contribution to education through research.

Adams is the author of the influential synthesis Beginning to Read: Thinking and Learning About Print and co‑author of Phonemic Awareness in Young Children: A Classroom Curriculum, among several other books and numerous scholarly articles on reading and language. She has contributed to major national efforts on reading, including service on the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children, and has worked as a lead literacy advisor for children’s educational media focused on early reading.