Maryanne Wolf, Mirit Barzillai, and Elizabeth Norton published a short article at the Scientific American blog Mind Matters in the category The Reading Brain, outlining new research:
Cognitive neuroscienists often break down the study of reading into its components, including processes that are phonological (related to the sounds of language), orthographic (related to the way a language is written t), and semantic (related to meaning). In their seminal work, Cohen, Dehaene and their colleagues concentrated on orthographic processes. In doing so, they have pushed our understanding of what the brain does when it reads anything from the smallest features of letters; oft-repeated letter patterns (such as the "ph" or "ent" in English); to words that vary in length, frequency of usage, position (where the eyes fixate when reading them) and the overall quality, or legibility of presentation. Using imaging methods, Dehaene, Cohen and their colleagues have added to the evidence that the brain of an expert reader taps different "routes," or circuits, for well-known, routinized text, such as a the type you are reading right now, compared with text that is written in a way that is less familiar (For instance, try reading this word q u i c k l y. Or try reading The Canterbury Tales in Old English.) This research suggests that learning to read the different letter patterns in your language is similar to any other task that requires practice. At first, it requires conscious effort and focus on each letter. But then, after a period of practice, the task becomes routine and automated. Your brain is able to read the words without having to process them letter by letter.
Their conclusions after the review?
Results from this study also suggest ways we can improve reading instruction in the classroom. For instance, educators should place a heightened emphasis on acquiring a repertoire of well-known letter patterns in a language, in addition to the current emphasis on training an awareness of phonemes, the component sounds that make up words, and on training knowledge of letter-sound correspondences necessary for decoding. Most importantly, all of these emphases should be explicitly connected when teachers instruct children who have difficulty reading (see for example our lab's work on the RAVE-O intervention where emphasis is placed on training several linguistic skills (orthographic, phonological, semantic, morphological, and syntactic knowledge) necessary for fluent reading in an integrated, systematic, and fun fashion ).
Thanks to the Dyslexia Tutor for the tip.
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