Language and Developmental Sensitivities (1)

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Language and Developmental Sensitivities (1)
Language’s Areas

The brain is biologically primed to acquire language. Chomsky (1959) proposed that the brain is equipped with a recipe for making sequences of sound into representations of meaning that is analogous to the system for translating sensory information into representations of objects.

That is, the brain is designed through evolution to process certain stimuli according to universal language rules. There are indeed brain structures specialised for language: research has stablished the role played by the left inferior frontal gyrus and the left posterior middle gyrus (Broca’s area and Wernicke’s area, respectively).

Broca’s area, long understood as implicated in language production, is now associated with a broader range of linguistic functions (Bookheimer, 2002). Wernicke’s area is involved in semantics (Bookheimer et al., 1998; Thompson-Schill et al., 1999).

Critically, these structures are for higher levels of processing, and therefore are not restricted to the simpler processing of incoming auditory stimuli – hearing per se. Visual information can also be processed linguistically, as in the case of sign language.

Though certain brain structures are biologically primed for language, the process of language acquisition needs the catalyst of experience.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 85

Read Requires Complex Skills (2)

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Learning to Read Requires Complex Skills (2)

Learning to Read Requires the semantic knowledge of word meanings. More than this, knowledge of syntactic rules governing the arrangements of words to show their relations to each other is also critical to meaning: Orsino loves Olivia does not mean the same thing as Olivia loves Orsino.

And more even than all this, each word must be integrated with previously-read words, which requires the co-ordination of different component functions and a working memory system.

The neural circuitry underlying literacy, which calls for all these skills, is guided by the interaction and synergy between the brain and experience, and hence the applicability of a dynamic developmental framework, such as skill theory, to the understanding of literacy (Fischer, Immordino-Yang and Waber, 2007).

Skill theory recognises that reading proficiency can be reached through multiple developmental pathways. Through this lens, neuroscience can enable the design of more effective and inclusive reading instruction.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, pages 84 - 85

Read Requires Complex Skills (1)

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Learning to Read Requires Complex Skills (1)

Learning to read requires the mastery of a collection of complex skills. First, the knowledge of morphology – the forms of either letters of an alphabet, syllabic symbols, or ideograms – must be acquired.

Then, orthographic symbols must be understood as the labels – spelling – that can be mapped onto sounds, without which the alphabetic symbols on this page would remain arbitrary shapes. Moreover, an understanding of phonetics – mapping words to sounds – is a vital, but by itself insufficient, tool for decoding words.

In alphabetic languages with deep orthographies, such as English or French, graphemephoneme combinations are variable, with English having the highest degree of “irregular” representation among alphabetic languages, at more than a thousand possible letter combinations used to represent the 42 sounds of the language.

Reading, particularly in languages with deep orthographies, therefore involves the use of supplementary strategies in addition to the phonological decoding of symbols into sounds. These strategies include using context clues, recognising whole words, and noticing partial-word analogies such as ate common to both “late” and “gate”.

Moreover, once a word has been decoded, understanding the meaning of the text requires additional skills.

"Understanding the Brain", The Birth of a Learning Science, 2007, page 84

When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (2)

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When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (2)

What is it about the dyslexic brain seems linked in some people to unparalleled creativity in their professions, which often involve design, spatial skills, and the recognition of patterns? Was the differently organised brain of a person with dyslexia better suited for the demands of the preliterate past, with its emphasis on building and exploring?

Will individuals with dyslexia be even better suited to the visual, technology-dominated future? Is the most current imaging and genetic research giving us the outlines of a very unusual brain organisation in some persons with dyslexia that ultimately explain both their known weaknesses and our steadily growing understand of their strengths?

Questions about the brain of a person with dyslexia lead us to look both backward to our evolutionary past forward to the future development. What is being lost and what is being gained for so many young people who have largely replace the books with the multidimensional “continuous partial attentions” culture of the Internet?

What are the implications of seemingly limitless of information for the evolution of the reading brain and for us as a species? Does the rapid almost instantaneous presentation of expansive information threaten the more time-demanding formation of in-depth knowledge?

Recently, Edward Tenner, who writes about technology, asked whether Google promotes a form of information illiteracy and whether may be unintended negative consequences of such a model of learning": It would be a shame if a brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of intellect that produced it. ”Reflect on such questions underscores the value of the intellectual skills facilitate through the literacy that we do not wish to lose, just when we appear poised to replaced them with other skills.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, pages 9 - 10

When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (1)

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When the Brain Cannot Learn To Read (1)

Knowledge about reading failure provides a different angle on this knowledge base, with some surprises for anyone who looks there.

Why so many children with dyslexia, have difficulty not only with reading but also with seemingly simple linguistic behaviours like discriminating individual sound or phonemes within words, or quickly retrieving the name of a colour. By tracking activity in the brain as it performs these various behaviours in normal development and in dyslexia, we are constructing living maps of the neural landscape.

The surprises on this landscape increase daily. Recent advances in neuroimaging research begin to paint a different picture of the brain of a person with dyslexia that may have enormous implication for future research, and particularly for intervention. Understanding these advances can make the difference between having a huge number of our future citizens poised to contribute to society and having a huge number who cannot contribute what they could otherwise.

Connecting what we know about the typical child`s development to what we know about impediment in reading can help us reclaim the lost potential of millions of children, many of whom have strengths that could light up our lives.

For we are also in the exciting early stages of understanding the title-studied that accompany the brain development of some persons with dyslexia. It is no longer reducible to coincidence that so many inventors, artists, architects, computer designers, radiologist, and financiers have a childhood history of dyslexia. The inventors Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, the artists Leonardo da Vinci and Auguste Rodin are all extraordinarily successful individuals with a history of dyslexia or related reading disorders.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, pages 9 - 10

We Were Never Born to Read

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We Were Never Born to Read

Human Beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we rearranged the very organization of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species.

Reading is one of the single most remarkable inventions in history; the ability to record history is one of its consequences.

Our ancestor invention could about only because of the brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connections among its existing structures, a process made possible by the brain’s ability to be shaped by experience.

This plasticity at the heart of the brain’s design forms the basis for much of who we are, and who we might become.

"Proust and the Squid", The Story and Science of the Reading, Brain, Maryanne Wolf, 2007, page 4