The Changing Reading Brain of the 21st Century: The Importance of “Knowing what we do
not Know” for the Future of How We Think
Center for Reading and Language Research
• Maryanne Wolf, Director
• Stephanie Gottwald, Asst. Director, Linguistics, Teacher Training
• Yashira Perez, Genes, Dyslexia, African-American & Latino children
• Cathy Moritz, Music and Reading
• Yvonne Gill (Arizona) and Lynne Miller, Curriculum Development for RAVE-O Basic and Plus
• Mirit Barzillai, Semantics, Global Literacy, Technology
• Elizabeth Norton, Brain Imaging in Early Predictors of Dyslexia
• Kate Ullman, African-American Dialect and Reading
• Surina Basho, Memory and Dyslexia Subtypes
• Melissa Orkin, Affective Development and Dyslexia
I am deeply indebted to...
Heidi Bally
Cinthia Coletti Haan
Ulrike Kesper-Grossman and Paul Grossman
Rossella and Aurelio Maria Mottola
Great transitions in Communication
11Non- language to Oral Language
22Oral Language toWritten Language
33Written Language toDigital Culture
What can we know?
What should we do?
What may we hope?
Three Questions of Kant (Dunne, 2012)
1. Can what we know about the evolution of the reading brain
inform the future, digital culture?
2. Can what we know about the reading brain illumine what we do not
know about how reading and thought will develop in the next generation?
3. Can knowledge about the “reading brain”, combined with multiple ways of
knowing---exemplified by Socrates, Proust, and Nicholas of Cusa--- propel a more hopeful approach to our transition?
What can we Know from
Neurosciences?
1. Can what we know about the evolution of the reading brain inform the future, digital culture ?
An Approach to the Study of Reading from Cognitive Neurosciences
The human brain was never born to read.
How did the human brain learn to read with
no genetic program or specific reading center?
Dehaene, 2009
“Neuronal Recycling” for Literacy
Principles of Brain Design Underpinning Cultural Inventions
•Ability to form new
connected circuits
• Capacity for “working
groups” of neurons to
specialize (pattern
recognition)
• Capacity for
automatization
Two Pyramidals,Greg Dunn
“Neuronal Niche” (Dehaene,2009)
For First Logographic Symbols
Y
Evidence for Neuronal Recycling and Possibly Proto-letters
Dehaene’s Studies of Numeracy in Primates
Studies of Baboons and Orthographic Learning
Grainger et al.
New Studies of Non-Literate Children in
Ethiopia-Tufts and MIT Media Lab
Earlier Tablets: Sumerian
Earliest emphases on
phonology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and
morphology(Cohen, 2000)
Greek Writing and the Alphabetic Principle
The insight that words are made up of
sounds and each sound can be signified
by a symbol.
Multiple Circuits of Reading Brain
English
Chinese & Kanji
Japanese Kana
Brain can rearrange itself in multiple ways
to read, depending on writing system and medium.
Bulger, Perfetti, & Schneider
Each new reader must create a new reading
circuit from older cognitive and
linguistic structures and their connections
How does the Young Brain Learn to Read?
Martinos MIT Imaging Center
Early Reading Brain: Everything Matters in the Development of the
Reading Circuit
Particularly, Language Development
Phonemes
Orthographic Patterns
Semantics
Syntax
Morphology
Expert Deep Reading” Brain on Proust
The Heart of Expert Reading
At the heart of reading,100 to 200 milliseconds allow us “time to think new thoughts”.
“We feel quite truly that our wisdom begins with that of the author…By a law which perhaps signifies that we can receive the truth from nobody, that which is the end of their wisdom appears to us as but the beginning of ours.”
Marcel Proust“Nous sentons tres bien que notre sagesse commence ou
celle de l’auteur finit... “
“Deep Reading”
“Slower”, concentrated cognitive processes encouraged in present expert reading brain
Inference
Analogical Thinking
Critical Analysis and Deliberation
Insight and Epiphany
Contemplation
Going beyond the wisdom of the author
2. Can what we know about the Reading Brain
illumine what we do not know about how reading
and thought will develop in a digital culture?
What are the deeper implications of having a plastic reading circuit as we move to a
digitally dominated set of mediums?
How do we think on-line?
“The scariest thing about Stanley Kubrick’s vision wasn’t that computers started to act like people but that people had started to act like computers. We’re beginning to process information as if we’re nodes; it’s all about the speed of locating and reading data.
We’re transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us.”
Nick Carr in “Do you trust Google?”, WIRED, Jan. 2008
37
Cognitive characteristics of on-line reading
in the digital reading brain
Continuous partial attention; less sustained attention and focus
“Set” for immediacy and speed of processing
Faster multi-tasking of large sets of information
Differences in Attention: “Skimming is the new normal”
Scanning, browsing, bouncing, keyword spotting (Liu, 2005, 2009)
Less time on in-depth, concentrated reading
Psychological reflex to “click” and move “set”
Decreased sustained attention
More attention to visual, external imagery
Less emphases on touch and materiality
Less internalization of knowledge, and more dependence on external sources
Cognitive Effects of Multi-tasking: Brain Imaging Studies
“Even if we can learn while distracted, it changes how you learn, making the learning less efficient and useful”
“Multitasking hinders learning”Russ Poldrack (2006)
Proceedings from National Academy of Science
Touch and Materiality Factors: Kinesthesia and Synesthesia Emphases in
Screen and Print
“Near impossibility of getting immersed in hypertext in same way as getting lost in a book”
(Mangen, 2009)
Comprehension for On-Screen vs. Print
(Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012)
Screen
The Formation of Deep ReadingHow does deep reading come to be?
Cautions From the Last Transition
Socrates feared that print would give the illusion of truth and create no ambition in the young beyond the superfluity of knowledge.
Is superfluity (“shallow reading”) and the expectation for constant, immediate external information be the new threat for digital readers? Will these emphases short-circuit
the reading brain?
Will the process of internalization of knowledge require too much time and cognitive effort given immediate access to external knowledge
Will imagination in childhood be displaced by too much that is given too quickly requiring too little effort?
Will the development of imagery in the child be displaced by visual imagery that is provided externally?
We can not go back to a pre-digital time; but, we should not lurch forward without understanding
what we will lose, what we will gain, for our
species’ cognitive repertoire.
“It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of
intellect that produced it.”- Edward Tenner
What can we know?
What should we do?
What may we hope?
Three Questions of Kant (Dunne, 2012)
3. Can knowledge about the “reading brain”, combined with multiple ways of knowing---exemplified by
Socrates/Aristotle, Proust, and Nicholas of Cusa--- propel a more hopeful approach to our transition?
How do we prevent “Short circuiting” of deep reading brain
while acquiring new skills necessary for the 21st
Century?
“A culture can be judged by how it pursues three lives:
the life of activity and productivity, the life of enjoyment, the life of
contemplation.”-Aristotle
Advantages of Digital Reading
Brain for the Life of Activity and
Productivity
➡ Massive information processing with more non-linear branching and iconic emphases
➡ Speed and efficiency
➡ Multi-tasking and interactive communication
➡ Democratization of knowledge
One of the greatest impediments to this
form of reading is the “busy mind” that
skips from one thought to the next without the capacity to enter the
hidden depths of words that require both
receptivity and the quiet focusing of
attention.-Enzo Bianchi
Advantages of Deep Reading Brain for the
“Life of Contemplation”The time required by deep reading
both in milliseconds during the reading act
and in years of formation changes the quality of
thought.
“We transgress not because we try to build the new, but because
we do not allow ourselves to consider
what it disrupts or diminishes”-Sherry Turkle, Alone
Together
How do we resolve a “coincidence of opposites of believable truths”?
-Nicholas of Cusa
“learn-ed ignorance”A kind of knowing that is aware of its own limits:
what we knowwhat we do not know
and what we need to know to understand and move forward.
What we know...
We know...
... our brain was never genetically programmed to read.
... each reader must build a new reading circuit.
We know...
... this reading circuit is plastic and influenced by the specific emphases of different writing systems and
mediums
We know...
... that the present reading brain is capable of both the most superficial and the deepest forms of
reading, feeling, and thought
We know...
What we do not know...
... but we can predict that information will accelerate at rates that will make completely new demands on every
person in the next generation.
Courtesy of Ray Kurzweil and Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
We do not know...
We do not know...
...if immediate access to massive amounts of information will change the nature of internal processing during
reading--- its deeper comprehension and the internalization of knowledge for future thoughts and
insights beyond information given.
... if the immediate access to this increasing amount of external information in the young will deter from the formation of “Deep Reading” processes or the
desire to probe more deeply into its meaning or to go beyond it.
We do not know...
... if such changes in internalized knowledge will result in a very different set of cognitive capacities to synthesize, infer from information, and go beyond it in very different, and more innovative ways than before, more appropriate
for the digital culture.
We do not know...
What can we know?
What should we do?
What may we hope?
Three Questions of Kant (Dunne, 2012)
“I think there’s a common point between both worlds, and then there’s also a point of departure where they
each demonstrate their own sort of
possibilities.”-Mark Danielewski
QuickTime™ et undécompresseur
sont requis pour visionner cette image.
“Knowing what we do not Know” as the basis for our Questions
How do we add to the repertoire of the expert reading brain without diminishing its present capacities?
How can the digital medium be designed to redress its own shortcomings?
How can we create the conditions for new readers to develop a bi-literate brain and to know when to skim and when to dive deeply?
A lecture about how the brain learns to leap beyond the information given shouldn’t have a
last slide.....