The Reading Brain

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!