Peter J. Hatcher was, until his retirement, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of York. He also worked as a Senior Educational Psychologist with the Cumbria Education Authority. His work in the area of understanding and helping children with reading difficulties master the skills of reading, with Charles Hulme and Andrew Ellis, culminated in their groundbreaking research (1994) that supported the Sound Linkage Hypothesis. Prior to working as an Educational Psychologist, he taught primary, secondary and tertiary-age students in special and mainstream settings in Australia, the Bahamas, Sierra Leone and the UK.

Fiona J. Duff is a Research Associate at the University of Oxford. She was previously a research fellow at the University of York, where she also completed her PhD. During her studies, she was awarded the British Psychological Society Postgraduate Award and was seconded to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, where she authored a briefing note for parliamentarians on teaching children to read.

Charles Hulme is Professor of Psychology at University College London. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Scientific Studies of Reading and is currently a Senior Editor of the Association of Psychological Science's flagship journal, Psychological Science. His publications include five authored and four edited books, over 190 journal articles, as well as several psychometric tests, including the United Kingdom's new standard test of reading comprehension, the York Assessment of Reading for Comprehension.