Qualifications

• PhD University of Cambridge
• MSc Oxford University
• Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE), Institute of Education, London.

Research

I have recently been awarded a grant from the Harpur Trust (£5,000) to investigate the impact of a bespoke musical program on early literacy skills in Year 1s in Bedford.

More broadly my research interests concern reading and language development/disability in infants and children. Amongst other projects, I am currently undertaking a longitudinal investigation looking at reading development in children who score poorly on tests of IQ.

Doctoral dissertation: Basic auditory processing skills and phonological awareness in low IQ good and poor readers and typically-developing controls. Supervised by Professor Usha Goswami director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Department of Experimental Psychology, Cambridge University.

Master's dissertation: Movement feedback and the preferential looking paradigm. An infant study supervised by Professor Dorothy Bishop, director of the Oxford Study of Communication Impairments, Department of Language and Cognition, Oxford University.

Member of the Brain & Cognition Group

Selected papers:

Sarah Kuppen, Martina Huss, Tim Fosker, Natasha Mead and Usha Goswami (2011). Basic auditory processing skills and phonological awareness in low-I.Q. readers and typically-developing controls, Scientific Studies of Reading, 15, 3, 211-243.

Killing, S. & Bishop, D.V.M (2008). Move it! Visual feedback enhances validity of preferential looking as a measure of individual difference in vocabulary in toddlers, Developmental Science, 525-530.

Selected oral papers:

Kuppen, S. & Goswami, U. (2010). A longitudinal study of basic auditory processing & phonology in low IQ good and poor readers and their controls. Spoken paper at the British Psychological Society Developmental Division Annual Conference at Goldsmith's College, London.

Killing, S. & Goswami, U. (2009). Auditory Processing Skills and Phonological Awareness in "Garden Variety" Poor Readers and Low-I.Q. Good Readers. Spoken paper at the international conference - Society for the Scientific Studies of Reading (SSSR), Boston.