Prof. Wai Ting Siok is Professor and Head of the Department of Chinese and Bilingual Studies at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. She received her Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics and Education from the University of Hong Kong and postdoctoral training at Stanford University Psychology Department and the Stanford Institute of Reading and Learning. Before joining PolyU, she was Associate Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts at HKU. 

Siok’s main research interest is to investigate the cognitive and neuroanatomical mechanisms underlying normal and dyslexic reading using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques (MRI, fMRI & DTI) and translate the basic research findings into educational and clinical practices. She was awarded several General Research Fund funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council and has served as a core investigator on several large-scale Mainland research projects such as the National Strategic Basic Research Scheme Grant, Shenzhen Peacock Team Program Grant and, more recently, Innovations of Science and Technology 2030 funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The series of research work done by Siok and her team related to the neural basis of Chinese reading and dyslexia, published in Nature, PNAS, Current Biology, and other journals, have collectively shown that neural networks used for reading may be culture-specific, as print-sound mapping varies substantially across writing systems. Their work has drawn international attention and aroused heated debates, and has led clinical practitioners to be aware of the need to develop culture-specific brain maps to protect the language functions of patients during brain surgery and inspire educators to develop Chinese-specific reading instruction and treatment approaches. Siok and her team also found that handwriting helps children to better memorize Chinese characters (PNAS, 2005) and that keyboard usage may negatively impact on children’s reading performance (PNAS, 2013). The latter finding has aroused concern about whether typewriting on electronic devices may increase the prevalence of reading disabilities.

Language neuroscience, Language development, Reading development, Chinese reading, Developmental dyslexia, Neuroimaging, Psycholinguistics, Bilingualism