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What is reading?
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The Reading BrainJenny Thomson
HT1001st November, 2010
Today’s session
1. Recap on what we know about reading2. The E-M-B perspective!
What is reading?
Reading is… A complex activity
Ace
Reading is… A complex activity Not natural
Reading is… A complex activity Not natural A different set of demands across languages
moikka
And teachers have to teach this?!
Which skills need to be taught? When do you teach them? Might different children need more focus on
different parts of the process?
Psychology to the rescue?
Phonological sensitivity is important to early reading Skilled reading involves a process that is less reliant
on phonology exclusively, but also involves direct visual recognition
Simple view of reading Reading comprehension = Word Recognition + Listening
Comprehension
So…
We psychology!
But…
It hasn’t told us everything
While psychology-informed best practice works for many, many students and 70% of struggling readers, 30% remain as “treatment resistors”
Even a minimal neuroscience background suggests that the brain is not composed of boxes and arrows
What are the options?
Psychology can step up its game We could see if neuroscience can add some insights Psychology and neuroscience could join forces to
answer educational questions None of the above
Psychology stepping it up
1. Accept and learn to love equifinality2. Use its existing tools to understand phonology and
reading subskills more
What about neuroscience?
And let’s remind ourselves of the critical question
While psychology-informed best practice works for many, many students and 70% of struggling readers, 30% remain as “treatment resistors”
What about neuroscience?
Post-mortem studies Functional studies e.g. fMRI and EEG/ERP Structural studies e.g. DTI
This is neat hypothesis…
What are the implications for identification and intervention for individuals with dyslexia?
What about neuroscience? Post-mortem studies Functional studies e.g. fMRI and EEG/ERP
This is also very neat… Does this add further educational implications? Do you see any limitations?
VWFA What has functional fMRI told us about the visual
word form area (VWFA)?
Enter ERP…
Electrical potentials generated during neurotransmission Recorded from electrodes on surface of scalp Time-locked signal averaging extracts very small event-
related potentials from the EEG Resulting averaged waveform is series of positive and
negative deflections, called ‘peaks’, ‘waves’ or ‘components’. The sequence of components following the stimulus reflects
the sequence of neural processes triggered by the stimulus
Luck, Woodman & Vogel, 2000
Back to the VWFAERP studies in adults have shown that within 200 ms of
viewing a visual word, electrical activity recorded over left posterior inferior regions of skilled readers responds differently to visual words versus control stimuli (i.e., strings of novel letter-like characters).
N170 – represents fast perceptual specialization
Study design
Results Non-linear, experience-
dependent plasticity
Tying things together If our question is why do 30% of struggling readers
not respond to instructional best-practice…
…Neuroscience and converging methodologies have burgeoning potential to help us understand developmental pathways, individual differences and response to intervention
But we’re not there yet!
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