Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website
Literate Arabic speakers have bilingual brains
Research has found that Arabic-speaking students tend to be less proficient in reading than other students are in their native language. Spoken Arabic comes in a variety of dialects and is quite different from the common written Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic - MSA). A new imaging study has now compared brain activity in a priming task among trilinguals fluent in MSA, spoken Arabic and Hebrew. The results revealed that the cognitive process in using MSA was more similar to that employed for Hebrew, and less similar to the cognitive process of using the spoken native language. These results not only help explain why learning to read is more difficult for Arabic speakers, but also suggests that the most effective way of teaching written Arabic is by using techniques usually employed for the instruction of a second language — including exposing children to written Arabic in preschool or kindergarten.
Ibrahim, R. 2009. The cognitive basis of diglossia in Arabic: Evidence from a repetition priming study within and between languages. Journal of Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 2.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-11/uoh-wiu110409.php
Remedial reading program improves brain wiring in children
An imaging study involving 72 children aged 8 to 10 has provided the first evidence that intensive instruction to improve reading skills in young children causes the brain to physically rewire itself. The study found that the ability of white matter tracts to transmit signals efficiently improved substantially after the children received six months (100 hours) of remedial training. Moreover, those who showed the most white matter change also showed the most improvement in reading ability. Previous research has found that both children and adults with reading difficulty display areas of compromised white matter.
Keller, T.A. & Just, M.A. 2009. Altering Cortical Connectivity: Remediation-Induced Changes in the White Matter of Poor Readers. Neuron, 64 (5), 624-631.
http://www.physorg.com/news179584529.html
Remedial instruction can close gap between good, poor readers
A brain imaging study of poor readers has found that 100 hours of remedial instruction not only improved the skills of struggling readers, but also changed the way their brains activated when they comprehended written sentences. 25 fifth-graders who were poor readers worked in groups of three for an hour a day with a reading "personal trainer," a teacher specialized in administering a remedial reading program. The training included both word decoding exercises in which students were asked to recognize the word in its written form and tasks in using reading comprehension strategies. Brain scans while the children were reading revealed that the parietotemporal region — responsible for decoding the sounds of written language and assembling them into words and phrases that make up a sentence — was significantly less activated among the poor readers than in the control group. The increases in activation seen as a result of training were still evident, and even greater, a year later.
Although dyslexia is generally thought of as caused by difficulties in the visual perception of letters, leading to confusions between letters like "p" and "d", such difficulties occur in only about 10% of the cases. Most commonly, the problem lies in relating the visual form of a letter to its sound.
Meyler, A., Keller, T.A., Cherkassky, V.L., Gabrieli, J.D.E. & Just, M.A.. 2008. Modifying the brain activation of poor readers during sentence comprehension with extended remedial instruction: A longitudinal study of neuroplasticity. Neuropsychologia, 46 (10), 2580-2592.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-06/cmu-cmb061108.php
Aircraft noise may affect children's reading and memory
A large study involving 2844 children aged 9-10 has found exposure to aircraft noise impaired reading comprehension. The children were selected from primary schools located near three major airports — Schiphol in the Netherlands, Barajas in Spain, and Heathrow in the UK. Reading age in children exposed to high levels of aircraft noise was delayed by up to 2 months in the UK and by up to 1 month in the Netherlands for each 5 decibel change in noise exposure. On the other hand, road traffic noise did not have an effect on reading and indeed was unexpectedly found to improve recall memory. An earlier German study found children attending schools near the old Munich airport improved their reading scores and cognitive memory performance when the airport shut down, while children going to school near the new airport experienced a decrease in testing scores.
Stansfield, S.A., Berglund, B., Clark, C., Lopez-Barrio, I., Fischer, P., Öhrstrom, E., Haines, M.M., Head, J., Hygge, S., van Kamp, I. & Berry, B.F. 2005. Aircraft and road traffic noise and children's cognition and health: a cross-national study. The Lancet, 365, 1942-1949.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/l-eta060105.php
Imaging study points to the importance of early stimulation in making good readers
A longitudinal study that used imaging to compare brain activation patterns has identified two types of reading disability: a primarily inherent type with higher cognitive ability (poor readers who compensate for disability), and a more environmentally influenced type with lower cognitive skills and attendance at more disadvantaged schools (persistently poor readers). Compensated poor readers were able to overcome some of the disability, improving their ability to read words accurately and to understand what they read. In contrast, the persistently poor readers continued to experience difficulties; as children these readers had lower cognitive ability and more often attended disadvantaged schools. Brain activation patterns showed a disruption in the neural systems for reading in compensated readers, while persistently poor readers had the neural circuitry for reading real words, but it had not been properly activated. The results suggest that providing early interventions aimed at stimulating both the ability to sound out words and to understand word meanings would be beneficial in children at risk for reading difficulties associated with disadvantage.
Shaywitz, S.E., Shaywitz, B.A., Fulbright, R.K., Skudlarski, P., Mencl, W.E., Constable, R.T., Pugh, K.R., Holahan, J.M., Marchione, K.E., Fletcher, J.M. et al. 2003. Neural systems for compensation and persistence: young adult outcome of childhood reading disability, Biological Psychiatry, 54 (1), 25-33.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-07/yu-yri071503.php
Neural changes produced by learning to read revealed
Understanding how our brain structures change as we learn to read is difficult because of the confounding with age and the learning of other skills. Studying adult learners is also problematic because in most educated societies adult illiteracy is typically the result of learning impairments or poor health. Now a new study involving 20 former guerrillas in Colombia who are learning to read for the first time as adults has found that these late-literates showed a number of significant brain differences compared to matched adult illiterates, including more white matter between various regions, and more grey matter in various left temporal and occipital regions important for recognizing letter shapes and translating letters into speech sounds and their meanings. Particularly important were connections between the left and right angular gyri in the parietal lobe. While this area has long been known as important for reading, its function turns out to have been misinterpreted — it now appears its main role is in anticipating what we will see. The findings will help in understanding the causes of dyslexia.
Carreiras, M. et al. 2009. An anatomical signature for literacy. Nature, 461 (7266), 983-986.
http://www.physorg.com/news174744233.html
The processes in reading
In a fascinating study, researchers have disentangled the three processes involved in reading: letter-by-letter decoding, whole word shape, and sentence context. They found that letter-by-letter decoding (phonics) determined 62% of reading speed, while context controlled 22% and word shape 16%.
Pelli, D.G. 7& Tillman, K.A. 2007. Parts, Wholes, and Context in Reading: A Triple Dissociation. PLoS ONE 2(8): e680.
Specific brain region for reading
Although a number of imaging studies have provided support for the idea that there’s a specific area of the brain that enables us to read efficiently by allowing us to process the visual image of entire words, the question is still debated — partly because the same area also seems to be involved in the recognition of other objects and partly because damage in this region has never been confined to this region alone. Now the experience of an epileptic requiring removal of a small area next to the so-called visual word-form area (VWFA) in the left occipito-temporal cortex has provided evidence of the region's importance for reading. After the operation, the patient’s ability to comprehend words was dramatically slower, and the results were consistent with him reading letter by letter. A brain scan confirmed that the VWFA no longer lit up when words were read, perhaps because the surgery severed its connection to other parts of the brain.
Gaillard, R. et. al. 2006. Direct Intracranial, fMRI, and Lesion Evidence for the Causal Role of Left Inferotemporal Cortex in Reading. Neuron, 50, 191-204.
Confirmation: boys have more literacy problems than girls
Previous research has suggested the reason that reading disabilities are more common among boys is that teachers simply tend to recognize the problem in boys more often. It is sometimes thought that boys are more disruptive, so the teachers pay more attention to them. However, new research investigating four previous large-scale studies of reading in children (2 New Zealand and 2 U.K.), involving a total of some 9,800 children, seems to make it clear that boys really do have more reading difficulties than girls. Across all the studies, about 20% of the boys had reading disabilities compared with about 11% of the girls. The studies used representative samples of children, not simply children already known to be having learning difficulties - a weakness of some previous research.
Rutter, M., Caspi, A., Fergusson, D., Horwood, L.J., Goodman, R., Maughan, B., Moffitt, T.E., Meltzer, H. & Carroll, J. 2004. Sex Differences in Developmental Reading Disability: New Findings From 4 Epidemiological Studies. JAMA, 291 (16), 2007-2012.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-05/uow-rrf051304.php
Reading verbs activates motor cortex areas
A new imaging study has surprised researchers by revealing that parts of the motor cortex respond when people do nothing more active than silently reading. However, the words read have to be action words. When such words are read, appropriate regions are activated – for example, reading “lick” will trigger blood flow in sites of the motor cortex associated with tongue and mouth movements. Moreover, activity also occurs in premotor brain regions that influence learning of new actions, as well as the language structures, Broca's area and Wernicke's area. The researchers suggest that these findings challenge the assumption that word meanings are processed solely in language structures – instead, our understanding of words depends on the integration of information from several interconnected brain structures that provide information about associated actions and sensations.
Hauk, O., Johnsrude, I. & Pulvermüller, F. 2004. Somatotopic Representation of Action Words in Human Motor and Premotor Cortex. Neuron, 41, 301-7.
Growing evidence cerebellum involved in language
An imaging study of children with selective problems in short term phonological memory and others diagnosed with specific language impairment (and matched controls) found that those with selective STPM deficits and those with SLI had less gray matter in both sides of the cerebellum compared to the children in the control groups. This supports growing evidence that the cerebellum, an area of the brain once thought to be involved only in the control of movement, also plays a role in processing speech and language.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-11/sfn-ssb111103.php
Gender differences in neural networks underlying beginning reading
A recent study uses EEG readings to investigate gender differences in the emerging connectivity of neural networks associated with phonological processing, verbal fluency, higher-level thinking and word retrieval (skills needed for beginning reading), in preschoolers. The study confirms different patterns of growth in building connections between boys and girls. These differences point to the different advantages each gender brings to learning to read. Boys favor vocabulary sub-skills needed for comprehension while girls favor fluency and phonic sub-skills needed for the mechanics of reading.
Hanlon, H. 2001. Gender Differences Observed in Preschoolers’ Emerging Neural Networks. Paper presented at Genomes and Hormones: An Integrative Approach to Gender Differences in Physiology, an American Physiological Society (APS) conference held October 17-20 in Pittsburgh.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-10/aps-gad101701.php
Gathercole, S.E., Service, E., Hitch, G.J., Adams, A. & Martin, A.J. 1999. Phonological short-term memory and vocabulary development: furtherevidence on the nature of the relationship. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 13, 65-77.
Finding: The ability of a child to repeat back unfamiliar words is constrained by the capacity of their working memory rather than their ability to articulate the words. The constraining effect of working memory capacity on the ability to learn new words continues into adolescence.
The effect of phonological short-term (working) memory and vocabulary knowledge was explored in two experiments (see Gathercole et al 1994 for a discussion of this effect). In the first experiment, four-year-olds were given various working memory tests (nonword repetition; digit span; nonword recognition). The correlation between working memory capacity and vocabulary knowledge was as strong for the serial recognition task as for the recall-based tests, supporting the view that it is working memory capacity rather than speech output skills which constrain word learning. In the next experiment, the same association betweenmemory capacity and vocabulary knowledge was found to be strong in teenagers, indicating that these working memory constraints remain significant throughout childhood.
Crain-Thoreson, C. 1996. Phonemic Processes in Children's Listening and Reading Comprehension. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 10, 383-401.
Finding: Rhyme appears to be more confusing than other phonemic similarities and can affect how clearly the child remembers what a heard story was about. However recall of verbatim details does not appear to be affected, and the susceptibility of a child to phonemic confusion doesn't appear to affect their reading skill.
Kindergarten and second-grade children were told phonemically confusing stories and second-graders were given phonemically confusing stories to read. It was found that rhymes were more consistently confusing than alliteratives in both the listening and readingtasks at both grade levels. This suggests not only that rhyme is inherently moreconfusing than alliteration, but that similar information is being activated when children listen and when they readsilently.
Both kindergarten and second-grade children showed phonemic confusion in their remembering of the gist of the stories that they heard, but prereaders were less likely than readers to show signs of phonemic confusion in their verbatim recall. However, children's sensitivity to phonemic information did not appear to affect their reading skill.
Gathercole, S.E., Willis, C.S., Baddeley, A.D. & Emslie, H. 1994. The Children's test of Nonword Repetition: a test of phonological working memory. Memory, 2, 103-27.
Finding: The ability of a child to repeat back unfamiliar words is constrained by the capacity of their working memory, and affects their ability to learn new words, as well as the ability to comprehend what they hear or read.
The Children's test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) involves the child hearing a single novel word-like item, such as "barrazon", and being required to immediately repeat it back. This occurs for 40 such items. Performance on this test is highly correlated with conventional tests of phonological working memory, and it appears that the ability to repeat back unfamiliar words is affected by the capacity of this aspect (the phonological loop) of working memory.
The test is particularly appropriate for young children, as it is a familiar task (young children are of course constantly coming up against unfamiliar words and often try to repeat them) and they usually readily understand what to do.
A number of studies have consistently found poor CNRep scores in children who are poor readers, and very low scores in children who are reading-impaired (such as dyslexics). Adults with various language processing disorders also perform poorly on this test.
Working memory capacity (which varies among individuals) affects many aspects of comprehension and recall. Among normal adults, working memory constraints usually only affect comprehension of particularly long and grammatically complex sentences. Among children, the ability to repeat back unfamiliar words affects both language comprehension and the learning of new words.