Positions

I work within the Developmental Psychology group within the Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam. I am also Director of the Rudolf Berlin Center for learning disabilities.

I serve on the Editorial Board of Annals of Dyslexia and Dyslexia.

My focus is on educational and school psychology with a special interest in first language acquisition and foreign language learning. I focus on individual differences between children in first and foreign language learning in a schoolcontext to improve teaching. I also aim to help teachers and practitioners to better aid children with learning disabilities such as developmental dyslexia. I use innovative methods such as game-based learning to improve differentiation in teaching and to assist teachers in taking individual differences into account. I also do research on improving children's well-being and learning at schools by improving the interaction between parents, schools, clinical practitioners and children in schools for special education.

My research is carried out within the Rudolf Berlin Center and NWO funded projects.

Ongoing research projects

• EyeRead.

With Ingmar Visser, Postdocs: Ruomeng Zhu and Mariska Okkinga

We investigate how students adopt different reading strategies while reading in English and how this is related to their comprehension. We utilize eye-tracking to shed light on the reading process of the students. The goal of this study is important from both a scientific perspective and from an educational practice perspective. As students in higher education are increasingly faced with longer texts and more complex tasks, they may face difficulties in both understanding those texts and relating the texts to the task. With this project, we uncover which strategies or task approaches contribute to successful reading comprehension. 

Completed research projects

• ORal and Written English Language Learning (ORWELL). All children are equal but some are more equal than others. Improving the acquisition of English at school. NWO-Nationaal Regieorgaan Onderwijsonderzoek (NRO).

With Judith Rispens, Jurgen Tijms and Maurits van der Molen, PhD student: Nihayra Leona, Postdocs: Margreet van Koert and Claire Goriot.

Excellent English language teaching is considered extremely important for societal success. Although English is mandatory, and demands of national exams have recently become more strict, it is yet unknown how teaching can optimally cater for individual differences between children. In this project we 1. Unravelled cognitive, linguistic and motivational predictors for succesful English learning in the highest three grades of primary education. 2. Developed individualized teaching methods for learning English.

• Neurodevelopmental Optimal-Predictors, Risk factors, and Intervention from a
  With Jurgen Tijms and Reinout Wiers, PhD student: Cara Verwimp
• Systems approach to Maladjustment in Children (Neo-PRISM-C project).

We trained Early Stage Researchers (ESRs) in applying the Research Domain Criteria, a novel framework for understanding psychopathology and in state-of-the-art and transferable skills for innovating the study of brainbehavior relationships in Neuro Developmental Disorders, in the context of a systems-based, trans-diagnostic theoretical frame. We supported training in designing evidencebased, individualized treatments of learning, behavioral, and social maladjustment, bridging across diagnostic categories. The Neo-Prism-C project was funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network (ITN) actions (See: http://www.neoprismc. org/).

• “Omdat de leerling er beter van wordt………………..”. Betrokkenheid van ouders bij onderwijs en behandeling in een residentiële setting voor de LVB doelgroep.

With Annematt Collot d'Escury and Helle Larsen. PhD student Annie de Groot (External, Orthopedagogisch behandelcentrum en onderwijs ‘s Heeren Loo).

• Fluency in Reading: Behavioural and neural correlates of cognitive processing in children with developmental dyslexia and typically reading children.

With Maurits van der Molen and Hilde Huizenga, PhD student Maaike Zeguers. Amsterdam Brain and Cognition (ABC)  research priority project

• Associative learning in reading fluency: neurocognitive processes underlying reading fluency and fluency training.

With Maurits van der Molen and Jurgen Tijms, PhD student Sebastián Aravena. University of Amsterdam and IWAL institutes for Dyslexia

Awards

• Nihayra Leona winner of UvA Psychology Research Master Thesis Prize 2014

Title: Application of the Theory of Planned Behavior to Low-Achieving Adolescents' Reading Behavior in Different Reading Contexts
Supervisors: Patrick Snellings, Amos van Gelderen and Mariska Okkinga 

Selected Publications

• Olkkonen, S., Snellings, P., Veivo, O. et al. (2024). Cognitive Fluency in L2: The Effect of Automatic and Controlled Lexical Processing on Speech Rate. J Psycholinguist Res 53, 66. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-024-10099-0
• van der Molen, M. W., Snellings, P., Aravena, S., Fraga González, G., Zeguers, M. H., Verwimp, C., & Tijms, J. (2024). Dyslexia, the Amsterdam Way. Behavioral Sciences, 14(1), 72.
• Verwimp, C., Vaessen, A., Snellings, P., Wiers, R.W., & Tijms, J. (2024). The COVID generation: Online dyslexia treatment equally effective as face-to-face treatment in a Dutch sample. Ann. of Dyslexia (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11881-023-00298-0
• Verwimp, C., Tijms, J., Snellings, P., & Wiers, R.W. (2023). A randomised proof-of-concept trial on the effectiveness of a game-based training of phoneme-grapheme correspondences in pre-readers. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12821
• Verwimp, C., Tijms, J., Snellings, P., & Wiers, R. W. (2023). Goal-Directedness Enhances Letter-Speech Sound Learning and Consolidation in an Unknown Orthography. Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13901
• Van Koert, M. J. H., Leona, N. L., Rispens, J. E., Tijms, J., Van der Molen, M. W., Daal, V. H. P. van and Snellings, P. "The role of memory in the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar in the first language and in English as a foreign language". Second Language Learning Before Adulthood: Individual Differences in Children and Adolescents, edited by Vanessa De Wilde and Claire Goriot, Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 2022, pp. 31-64. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110743043-003
• De Groot, A., Snellings, P.J.F. & Collot d’Escury, A.M.L (2022). Ouderbetrokkenheid in onderwijs en behandeling bij licht verstandelijk beperkte jongeren in een (semi)residentiële setting. Orthopedagogiek: Onderzoek en Praktijk, 61(1)
• Verwimp, C., Tijms, J., Snellings, P., Haslbeck, J. M. B., & Wiers, R. W. (2021). A network approach to dyslexia: Mapping the reading network. Development and Psychopathology, 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579421000365
• Nihayra L. Leona, Margreet J.H. van Koert, Maurits W. van der Molen, Judith E. Rispens, Jurgen Tijms, Patrick Snellings (2021). Explaining individual differences in young English language learners’ vocabulary knowledge: The role of Extramural English Exposure and motivation, System, Volume 96, 2021, 102402, ISSN 0346-251X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2020.102402
• Verburg, M., Snellings, P., Zeguers, M. H. T., & Huizenga, H. (2019). Positive-blank versus negative-blank feedback learning in children and adults. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021818769038
• Zeguers, M. H. T., van den Boer, M., Snellings, P., & de Jong, P. F. (2018). Universal and language-specific predictors of early word reading in a foreign language: An analysis of the skills that underlie reading acquisition in three different orthographies.  Developmental Psychology, 54(12), 2274-2290. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000606
• Zeguers, M. H. T., Huizenga, H., & M.W. van der Molen, & Snellings, P. (2017). Time course analyses of orthographic and phonological priming effects in developing  readers. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2017.1345958
• Aravena, S., Tijms, J., Snellings, P., & van der Molen, M. W. (2017). Predicting individual differences in reading and spelling skill with an artificial script-based letter-speech sound training. Journal of Learning Disabilities. doi:10.1177/0022219417715407
• S. Aravena, Tijms, J., Snellings, P., & M.W. van der Molen (2016). Predicting responsiveness to intervention in dyslexia using dynamic assessment. Learning and Individual Differences, July 2016, 209–215,  doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2016.06.024.
• Tijms, J., Scheltinga, F., Zeguers, M. & Snellings, P. (2016). Dyslexie. In Snellings, P. & Zeguers, M. (Eds.). Interventies in het onderwijs: Leerproblemen (2e druk). Amsterdam: Boom.
• Zeguers, M. & Snellings, P. (2016). De ontwikkeling en het trainen van leesvloeiendheid. In Van den Broeck, W. (Ed.). Handboek dyslexieonderzoek. Wetenschappelijke inzichten in diagnostiek, oorzaken, preventie en behandeling van dyslexie. Acco: Leuven/Den Haag.
• S. Aravena, Snellings, P., J. Tijms & M.W. van der Molen (2013). A lab-controlled simulation of a letter–speech sound binding deficit in dyslexia. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 115(4), 691-707.
• M.H.T. Zeguers, P. Snellings, J. Tijms, W.D. Weeda, P. Tamboer, A. Bexkens & H.M. Huizenga (2011). Specifying theories of developmental dyslexia: a diffusion model analysis of word recognition. Developmental Science, 14(6), 1340-1354.
• Snellings, P. , Leij, A. v. d., de Jong, P. F., & Blok, H. (2010). Reading fluency and speech perception speed of beginning readers with persistent reading problems: the perception of initial stop consonants and consonant clusters. Annals of Dyslexia, 60 , 151-174.
• Snellings, P. , van der Leij, A., de Jong, P. F., & Blok, H. (2009). Enhancing the Reading Fluency and Comprehension of Children With Reading Disabilities in an Orthographically Transparent Language. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42 (4), 291-305.
• Van Gelderen, A., Schoonen, R., De Glopper, K., Hulstijn, J., Simis, A., Snellings, P., & Stevenson, M. (2004). Linguistic Knowledge, Processing Speed and Metacognitive Knowledge in First and Second Language Reading Comprehension; A Componential Analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 96(1), 19-30.
• Snellings, P. , Van Gelderen, A., & De Glopper, K. (2004). The effect of enhanced lexical retrieval on L2 writing; a classroom experiment. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25 (2), 175-200.
• Snellings, P. , Van Gelderen, A., & De Glopper, K. (2004). Validating a test of second language written lexical retrieval: a new measure of fluency in written language production. Language Testing, 21 (2), 174-201.

• Childhood: Clinical and School Psychology
• Practical Intervention skills
• Supervising Bachelor and Master theses
• Lectures on Foreign language learning
• Dyslexia and Reading Development
• Supervising Practical Internships
• coordination of the Advanced Internship Learning disabilities at the Rudolf Berlin Center