Ehri, Linnea C.

Linnea Carlson Ehri is an American educational psychologist and expert on the development of reading. She is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Educational Psychology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Ehri is known for her theory of orthographic mapping, which describes the process of forming "letter-sound connections to bond the spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of specific words in memory" that underlies fluent reading. As a consequence of orthographic mapping, written words are tightly linked with their pronunciations and meanings in memory and can be recognized by sight. Ehri served on the National Reading Panel, commissioned by the U.S. Congress to report on research-based methods of effective reading instruction from 1997 to 2000. As a member of the panel, she chaired the alphabetics subgroup. Using meta-analysis, the group documented the benefits of systematic phonics and phonemic awareness instruction in helping children learn to read.