Dr. Craig Wright

Dr Craig Wright is a psychologist with 20 years of experience in clinical practice and research positions. He obtained his PhD in 2004 and held a Research Fellowship at Griffith University between 2010-2012. He is a member of the Advisory Board for the Macquarie University Reading Clinic, and is on the Editorial Board of the Australian Journal of Learning Difficulties. He has served tenure as President of Learning Difficulties Australia.

Craig published the first ever scientific paper on the effectiveness of virtual therapy in 2011, with a focus on delivering reading interventions to rural and remote students. Colleagues at Macquarie University are currently extending this research. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed scientific articles, book chapters, and training programs, and presented at many conferences in the areas of dyslexia, dysgraphia, reading intervention, ADHD, challenging behaviour and the autism spectrum. His peer-reviewed research has appeared in the prestigious journals Neuropsychologia, Developmental Neuropsychology and Brain and Cognition.

Craig is the author of the Understanding Words intervention program for students with dyslexia and dysgraphia. The program was developed to provide a cheap, accessible and effective way for relatively unskilled teachers, parents and allied health workers to deliver reading/spelling intervention to children. It is widely used, including at the Macquarie University Reading Clinic.

Craig has a keen interest in the delivery of evidence-based treatment for learning, intellectual and behavioural disorders across the lifespan. At University, Craig explored cognitive neuro-psychology and Skinnerian behaviourism; essentially using models of how the brain works to understand behaviour, and the science of learning through reinforcement. Together with his mentor Liz Conlon, they explored the causal theory of dyslexia – how dyslexia might be caused by a deficiency in a particular visual cell called a magnocell. Craig extended this research in a PhD, however his passion for people (instead of magnocells) led him to start clinical training in 2002.

He has two children and a German Shephard puppy (also the therapy dog).