1 / 27

The Reading Brain

The Reading Brain. Jenny Thomson HT100 1 st November, 2010. Today’s session. Recap on what we know about reading 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

bailey
Download Presentation

The Reading Brain

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. The Reading Brain Jenny Thomson HT100 1st November, 2010

  2. Today’s session • Recap on what we know about reading • The E-M-B perspective!

  3. What is reading?

  4. Reading is… • A complex activity

  5. Ace

  6. Reading is… • A complex activity • Not natural

  7. Reading is… • A complex activity • Not natural • A different set of demands across languages moikka

  8. 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?

  9. 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

  10. So… We  psychology! But…

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. Psychology stepping it up • Accept and learn to love equifinality • Use its existing tools to understand phonology and reading subskills more

  14. 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”

  15. What about neuroscience? • Post-mortem studies • Functional studies e.g. fMRI and EEG/ERP • Structural studies e.g. DTI

  16. This is neat hypothesis… • What are the implications for identification and intervention for individuals with dyslexia?

  17. What about neuroscience? • Post-mortem studies • Functional studies e.g. fMRI and EEG/ERP

  18. This is also very neat… • Does this add further educational implications? • Do you see any limitations?

  19. VWFA • What has functional fMRI told us about the visual word form area (VWFA)?

  20. 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

  21. Luck, Woodman & Vogel, 2000

  22. Back to the VWFA ERP 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

  23. Study design

  24. Non-linear, experience-dependent plasticity Results

  25. 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!

More Related