 Her older brother's cerebral palsy made it difficult for most people to understand his speech, but
After graduating from Cleveland Heights High School in 1949, Gleason earned a B.A.in history and literature from Radcliffe College, then an M.A.in linguistics, and a combined Ph.D. in linguistics and psychology, at Harvard; from 1958 to 1959 she was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT.