Fast ForWord >> Los Angeles Times
page 1
In Art of Language, the Brain Matters
By Robert Lee Hotz, Times Science Writer
Discovery: New Techniques let researchers observe neural activity as children read. Understanding how the mind works could reshape classroom instruction.
For generations, teachers have struggled to correct the reading disorders that handicap one in every five Americans with little more than theory and the informed institution of trial and error to guide them. Now, by probing the neural processing of written words, researchers for the first time are discovering the true character of reading problems. Surprisingly, they are finding that to every human brain - tailored by evolution to communicate through speech - reading is an unnatural act.
As the eye chases a sentence across the page, the brain must per- petually orchestrate neural systems crafted by nature for entirely different tasks, new research shows. So quickly must the brain work that the difference between a good reader and a poor reader may be measured in thousandths of a second. Complicating the process are mental differences in how men and women read; in the brains of those who read poorly and those who read well; even between the same person reading aloud and read- ing silently. And, unexpectedly, the neurological roots of reading problems may develop well before toddlers are ever introduced to the alphabet. Already scientists are learning to correct reading disorders by directly attacking the neural processing problems that cause them, actually changing the physical structure of the brain. Indeed, several leading brain researchers are marketing computerized training programs that remold a childÕs crucial neural circuits, taking advantage of the brain's remarkable ability to rewire itself.
These new discoveries offer a glimpse into the future of reading reform, in which classroom instruction would be based on an intimate scientific understanding of how the brain works. "In the past, educational methods ... have never been based on neuroscience or any research based on an understanding of how the brain actually learns," said UCLA neuro-psychologist Susan Y. Bookheimer, who studies language disorders and the brain. "This is something fundamentally different." At a time when debates over the best way to teach reading are waged with ideological fervor in elementary school classrooms, the systematic study of the brain offers the best hope of solving the problems caused by learning written language, experts say. Reading problems affect as many as 8 million children between the ages of 4 and 13, with an additional 800,000 poor readers diag- nosed every year, experts at the National Institutes of Health said. If not corrected by age 9, a reading problem will become a lifetime struggle, according to Yale University studies.
New research by Harvard University scientists shows that people diagnosed as poor readers in elementary school still have not caught up on their reading skills even 30 years later. "In the long run, the only way to make really serious progress is to develop a thorough scientific understanding of what is going on in the brain," said Stanford University neuroscientist David Heeger, who studies how the brain visualizes letters and words.
Such progress does not come easily - or cheaply. The National Institute of Childhood Health and Human Development has been steadily spending about $21million a year on research projects that so far have studied 38,000 readers. Teaching experiments are underway at 266 schools. But even so, the gap between the labora- tory and the classroom remains all but unbridgeable, experts said, due to long-standing disagreements over the ultimate causes of reading failures. In addition, some research is so new that educa- tors simply have not had time to digest its ramifications. Those who study language and the brain say that poor readers are being diagnosed incorrectly or too late, taught improperly or not intensively enough. Their problems often are misunderstood, even by those trying hardest to help them. "What we know already from research is not being applied in instruction, "said language expert Jack M. Fletcher at the University of Texas-Houston.
| Technique Yields Surprising Insights For the first time, researchers are able to study the living brains of children and adults directly. This revolution in reading research is being driven in large measure by a new generation of noninvasive imaging tech- niques that allow monitoring of rapid, subtle shifts in mental activity as people read. "Scientists are euphoric that we have a technology that allows us to look at brains of people while they are reading," said neurolo- gist BermettA. Shaywitz, co-director of the Yale University Center for the Study of Learning and Attention. Like UCLA, Yale is using the brain scanners to study children who have trouble reading. "The imaging technology takes a hidden disability and makes it visible," Shaywitz said. The result is a cascade of surprising new neurobiological insights. Scientists are finding that reading: - Depends on two separate but equally important neural systems involving sound and pictures. The brain reads primarily by trans- lating written characters into the phonological building blocks of spoken language. But the brain also links a memorized picture of a complete written word to its meaning, recalling it in a way that bypasses the need to sound out the word. - Is a matter of timing. Experts at Rutgers University have shown that to read well, the brain has only a few thousandths of a second to translate each symbol into its proper sound. Most children can process such sounds in less than 40 milliseconds, but language- impaired children may need up to 500 milliseconds - fast enough to speak fluently, but too slow to read well. |
Symptoms of Possible Reading Disorders At home, a child who is at risk for language and reading problems often: - Misunderstands what is said - Denies hearing the beginning or middle of a long talk - Requests that information be repeated - Gives slow or delayed responses - Has difficulty telling a story in the correct order - Has problems finding the right word to say - Uses imprecise words or phrases - Uses only a few descriptive words - Is reluctant to talk In school, a child with language and reading problems might: - Have problems remembering or following oral instructions - Forget the question when called on in class - Seem to daydream in class - Do poorly in noisy situations - Have problems with ambiguous language, idioms or homonyms - Have problems with phonics - Have reading or spelling problems - Have unexplained behavioral problems |
- Depends on keeping the mind's eye in focus. Scientists at Harvard, Georgetown University and Stanford University are find- ing that minor differences in how the brain handles the visual processing of images, color, fast motion and contrast can impede reading. Again, the speed of the visual processing may be crucial.
- Is different for men and women. Men do not use their brains the same way to read as women do, Yale researchers demonstrated, yet both sexes are equally afflicted with reading troubles. Nonetheless, boys may be diagnosed more often with reading disorders than girls.
- Appears to make the brains of people who read poorly function differently than those who read well, in some ways making them work harder. Yet researchers at Dartmouth, UC Davis and other centers believe that everyone has some trouble adjusting to the written word because it makes such taxing demands on so many different parts of the brain.
Moreover, reading disorders originate in children much earlier than previously believed - often years before they are diagnosed in school and well after they most readily may be corrected, language experts at UCLA, Harvard, Rutgers and the University of Texas said.
Mind Reading
|
Reading simply does not come naturally to anyone. And what many reading experts traditionally diagnosed as a learning disability arising from a physical defect may instead result from normal variations in how individual brains work. "Reading problems are an expression of an entirely normal brain; it is just that different brains have different abilities," said Judith L. Lauter, director of the Center for Communication Neuroscience at the University of Oklahoma. Indeed, the simple act of reading a book may be one of the most challenging tasks the brain must perform, the new findings of neuroscience suggest. "Reading does not just happen," said UC Davis neurology expert Kathleen Baynes. "It is just a terrible struggle." Our Biological Destiny: Speaking Not Reading The anatomy of reading is shaped by that struggle. Consider a 45- year-old San Jose housewife known to the scientific world as V.J. To cure severe epilepsy, she recently underwent an unusual opera- tion that surgically separated the hemispheres of her brain. When it comes to reading, she is today of two minds The left side of her brain can read things it cannot write. The right side of her brain can write things it cannot read. |
alternative learning styles reach
their full potential through the
implementation of multi-sensory
techniques.™