Proust and the Squid by Maryanne Wolf (HarperCollins, 2007) is the most well-written and inspiring book about the reading brain that I have ever read.  What a remarkable writer!—a rare thing among scientists.  If you are interested in how the brain works to develop skilled reading, do yourself a favor and read it!

Read an excerpt from the book here.

Here are some quotes from the book that I would like to share with you:

“Reading is one of the single most remarkable inventions in history; the ability to record history is one of its consequences.   Our ancestors’ invention could come about only because of the human brain’s extraordinary ability to make new connections among its existing structures, a process made possible by the brain’s ability to be shaped by experience.  This plasticity at the heart of the brain’s design forms the basis for much of who we are and who we might become.”  Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid, HarperCollins, NY, 2007

“Reading can be learned only because of the brain’s plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed, both physiologically and intellectually.” Maryanne Wolf, Proust and the Squid, HarperCollins, NY, 2007

I came away from the conference with some interesting books:

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

a novel by Mark Haddon.

This is a real charmer of a novel about a bright and quirky boy, trying to solve the murder of a dog, who encounters many of the problems that misfits face in our society.  Anyone who has had contact with a child dealing with autism spectrum difficulties will recognize his literal way of thinking and his perplexities as he tries to understand the people around him.  You can’t help but love his honesty and earnestness, as he goes about solving his mystery.

2. Last Child in the Woods

Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder

By Richard Louv

Nature is essential for a child’s healthy physical and emotional development. The author cites a growing body of evidence linking the lack of nature in children’s lives and the rise in obesity, attention disorders and depression.  He describes a generation so plugged into electronic diversions that it has lost its connection to the natural world.  This topic ties in with research discussed in the conference about “softly fascinating environments”—I’ll summarize it later….

3.  Waging Peace in our Schools

by Linda Lantieri and Janet Patti

This book is about the largest and most successful school initiatives in social and emotional learning in the country—the Resolving Conflict Creatively Program, now active in more than 350 schools nationwide. Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence says, “a model of emotional intelligence…I hope that every teacher and parent reads this and takes this superb advice to heart.”

4. Intelligence and How to Get It

Richard E. Nisbett

Intellect is not primarily genetic, but is principally determined by societal influences.  Intelligence is not fixed at birth—it is fragile and malleable. This concept has astounding implications for the role of education.  Parents and teachers are literally responsible for changing the brains of their charges—either for better or for worse.  This book is shocking and inspiring, expanding on the remarkable research of Hart and Risley in their groundbreaking study Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children.  Both books are a must-read for anyone interested in education.

Is this something that parents should be concerned about?  I think so. And it is the responsibility of parents because most of this happens after school. But what can be done? Here are three ideas.  Maybe you have more, and can share them with our readers…

1. Model for your children.

Have conversations at dinner or before bed where you really pay attention to what they think about some issue.  Tell them what you’ve been thinking, and that you’re going to write it down so you won’t forget it. If they see you writing, if they see you putting thought into some letter to an editor or a politician, or a poem or song, or your diary, and you talk about why it’s important to you, they will follow your lead.  Let them see you pursuing new knowledge yourself. It’s good for the aging brain as well as the developing brain!

2. You can set limits on the media.

Best to start when your kids are young, before they become rebellious teen-agers!  If they don’t honor your limits, take the devices away!  Decide how much time you want them to spend on TV or video games, and then stick to it.

3. Provide some opportunities for challenging experiences.

During the year, set aside a few weeks for doing something completely different without bringing the media along. Maybe as a family you participate in community service and you’re learning about green ecology.  Maybe you help Habitat for Humanity build houses and you’re learning about construction, and measurement, and carpentry.  Maybe you take a vacation to one of our amazing national parks and you learn to camp in the wilderness.  Maybe you travel to another country and learn about another culture and language.

In 1970, my children were 11 and 13.  My husband and I were discouraged with the school system in New Orleans, and tired of arguing with our kids about TV time.  I’ll tell you what we did in my next blog post…

A new study put out by Kaiser Family Services tells us that children are using media like TV, music, and internet social media more than 7.5 hours a day—that comes to an average of 53 hours a week of mostly passive experience! Yes, they text, but what kind of thought goes into texting or tweeting?  Are their brains really processing and analyzing and digesting new information?  Unfortunately, no.

Using the brain fully requires a complete circuit—IN + PROCESSING-> OUT.  It’s the PROCESSING and the OUT that’s missing. The brains of this generation are not learning to think deeply or express thoughts in an articulate and reasoned way.  Thoughts are being expressed rapidly without reflection, and compressed into short sentences requiring the shallowest of thinking, the paltriest use of language.  Fewer connections are made in the brain, and there is little growth.  This lack of neural challenge occurs during a period of time when young brains should be developing and laying down millions of connective nerve pathways that will serve for a lifetime.

How many youngsters of this American generation could write a diary like Anne Frank, or letters like John Adams? Teachers in middle school, high school and college these days despair of getting their students to write even a cogent paragraph.

Writing should start in kindergarten and be required across the curriculum all the way through school. And writing should be encouraged and praised by parents at home. Putting words on paper (or screen) makes your thoughts visible.  It creates a space for them to sit while you think about what you’ve said.  There may be another way to say them that will be kinder, or more forceful, or more imaginative.  The words sit there waiting, while your brain sorts through many possibilities—A metaphor? A different word?  A punctuation mark? A more humorous phrase?

What should concerned parents do to limit media time, and to provide more stimulating and meaningful experiences to help their children grow smarter brains?  More in the next blog…and send me your ideas as well, as a comment reply to this post, I would love to hear and share them.

(The study mentioned here is not available on-line, but a similar study and article can be read here.)

The machine was familiar to her now, but it was still amazing to think that it could take a picture of her son’s brain while he was reading!  Johnny was lying down inside the machine, and she could hear him answering questions that the doctor was asking.

Ann sat down to wait and thought about all that had happened in the last couple of months. Her son had been having a hard time in second grade.  She knew she had to do something about it when he came home crying, saying that everyone else knew how to read, and he just didn’t get it.

“I’m just stupid”, he had sobbed.  “I’m never going to learn how to read!”

His teacher told her that Johnny was quite bright, but that he did have trouble reading.  She suggested that Ann might look into the reading research project that was going on in the neuroscience department at the nearby university.  At first Ann was skeptical that brain research would be of any help to Johnny, but she noticed that they were also providing special instruction.  Luckily, she came to a decision that would change Johnny’s life.

Eight weeks ago, when Ann and Johnny had agreed to be part of the study, the researchers tested his reading to see what problems he had. He did poorly at recognizing words, but what Dr Matthews found most interesting was the fact that Johnny couldn’t identify the separate sounds in words.

“When I say the word “CAT”, my mouth is making three sounds,” Dr Matthews explained. “c”, “a”, and “t”.  What are the sounds in the word “PIG”?  Johnny couldn’t tell him.

The first pictures of his brain had showed that Johnny was activating mostly the right side of his brain when he did the reading tasks inside the machine.  Dr. Matthews said that skilled readers used mostly the left side of the brain.

“He’s not using his brain efficiently for reading”, he said.  “We’d like to give him about 80 hours of special instruction and see whether his reading improves. Then we’ll look at his brain again and see if there are any changes.”

Johnny had faithfully come two hours every day for the last eight weeks. The researchers taught him to pay attention to the way his mouth moved when he made the different sounds in words.  He learned that the speech sounds he pronounced could be represented by letters.  Finally he began to understand what reading was about!  Yesterday, when they tested his reading, it had improved dramatically!

Ann stood up and went to the window.  She was impatient for the brain imaging to be over.  Today would be an interesting day.  They would see whether Johnny was using his brain differently to do the same reading tasks he had done eight weeks ago in the machine.

When the new pictures were ready, Dr. Matthews was as anxious as Ann and Johnny were to look at them.  He put them up beside the original pictures taken eight weeks ago. The results were startling!  Although Johnny had been using areas of his right hemisphere eight weeks ago, now the right hemisphere activity had diminished and he was clearly using areas in the left.  When Dr. Matthews put up a picture of a brain of a skilled reader, the activation showing in the left side of the brain was very similar to what they were seeing in Johnny’s new pictures.

“Bingo!” he exclaimed.  “Congratulations, Johnny!  You’re going to help us explain to the world how children can be helped to learn to read!”

“But wait a minute!” Ann exploded.  “If it just took eight weeks to fix this, and you literally changed his brain, how come he didn’t learn to read this way in school?  Why did his brain start working inefficiently in the first place?  How should children be taught so that they don’t start using the wrong side of their brains?”

“We don’t know all the answers yet,” Dr. Matthews replied. ”Some children with severe reading problems (dyslexia) may have a genetic difference that affects how the brain organizes itself.   However, we now think that many children labeled with reading disabilities may simply have had ineffective early instruction.  It does seem that some children are more vulnerable and need more intense instruction than others, and we don’t know why.  But it should be possible to teach the skills Johnny has just learned starting in kindergarten or even earlier.  The children who find reading and writing easy should be allowed to tackle more and more challenging stories, and those children who need help should get more intense instruction until they are aware of the different sounds their mouths make when they say words and can link those sounds with letters.” He smiled.  “Anyway, I think Johnny is on his way!”

This fictional story is typical of the experience of students who have volunteered in recent years for similar studies.  The new techniques for imaging the brain have changed the way we think about reading because they have shown that struggling readers are using inefficient brain pathways, mostly in the wrong half of the brain.  The most dramatic discoveries, however, were exactly what happened to the Johnny in our story.

Intense special instruction significantly improved the reading skills and changed the way the brain organized itself for reading!

The brain of a newborn is already listening to sounds and trying to make sense of them. Very young children need to have lots of experience listening to spoken words, watching adults or siblings as they speak, and responding to the speech they hear by using their own voices. As the brain builds its capacity for speaking and understanding speech, it organizes a vast data bank of the sounds of words, the meaning of those words, and the complex motor commands that are required for saying those words.  These elements are so well organized that this information can be accessed instantly.

The left half of the newborn brain, like a closet, comes with two built-in “shelves” for storing these important elements of communication—the ability to receive meaningful words (UNDERSTAND) and the ability to express (SAY) meaningful words. Humans have been talking for so many thousands of years that our brains have evolved to set aside these two locations—the UNDERSTAND shelf and the SAY shelf– for this specific purpose. These shelves automatically start piling up with vocabulary as babies learn new words. The more the better!

But since reading is a relatively new task in the evolutionary scheme of things, the brain does not have an automatic READ “shelf” for storing reading. It does its best at “putting away” this new information, but sometimes it is not organized well.  Sometimes, if the new information about visual words requires a lot of pattern analysis, or comes in a haphazard or confusing way, or in the wrong order, critical elements of reading can be stored on the wrong shelves, or even across the hall in the pantry.

To continue this metaphor about storage, the left half of the brain, the “closet”, is for storing things about language and the right half of the brain, the “pantry” is for storing other processes like recognizing spatial patterns, contours, configurations, and faces. If words are initially stored as visual patterns, it may become very inefficient to cross the “hall” (the fibers connecting the two halves of the brain) to search for information about their meaning and their pronunciation in the “closet”. These READ words should be located in the closet, right next to “UNDERSTAND” and “SAY”.

It’s like looking for your socks. You have a better chance of finding clean socks quickly in the morning if you pair them and always keep them in the same place. This is a very oversimplified way to think about the brain, which is actually an enormously complex organ, but the metaphor may serve to illustrate what happens when children have difficulty reading—the essential elements of reading are not connected together by efficient neural pathways.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

The paragraph is actually readable, but only by adults (or efficient readers) who have ALREADY LEARNED TO READ (AND CAN PREDICT WHAT’S COMING FROM THE MEANING OF THE SENTENCE).

When children are learning to read, the brain has to figure out where to store this new information.  The new process of reading needs to be well connected to the already established neural networks of speech.  This is accomplished by establishing automatic links between the speech sounds in words and the letters that stand for them.  After repeated exposure to the word, and decoding by “sounding-out”, eventually the brain stores the whole word for automatic visual recognition near the speech areas (Shaywitz “word form” area), and the meaning is accessed instantly by accessing the PRONUNCIATION. So three critical elements must be well connected–pronunciation, meaning and the visual appearance of the word. If words are not stored in this way, there is inefficiency in the neural pathways and reading becomes a struggle.

Adults can read words instantly, and can read garbled words like the above paragraph, so adults have sometimes concluded, erroneously, that children learning to read can do the same, and should therefore just memorize the visual appearance of words without using phonics.  This thinking unfortunately led to the “whole language” movement which set reading scores into a downward spiral wherever it replaced a good phonics-based curriculum.

One can imagine some Sumerian only a few thousand years ago pondering this problem, saying “Aha!  I only make a limited number of sounds with my mouth when I speak.  I’ll make a different mark to stand for each sound I make when I say a word!”  And the alphabet was born!  It has taken a very short time to progress from marks in clay, to ink on velum, to Gutenberg type on paper, to computer print-outs.

Why do we care that reading is a new human capability?  Why is it important to know that a permanent filing system in the brain has not yet evolved for storing the complex elements of reading and writing? Because as the brain learns to read, it has to do its best at organizing the critical elements of reading for instant retrieval. For many children this organization depends on the way reading is introduced.   If the millions of neurons storing these critical elements are not efficiently connected, reading can become very difficult.

Parents, care-givers, and teachers play a vital role when children start to become curious about letters and words on a page. There’s a strong tendency for parents to teach their children the way they learned themselves.  But some old methods, like showing children how to remember the appearance of words by pointing out that the word LOOK “has two eyes in the middle”, or CAMEL “has two humps in the middle” will not help them build the skills they need for competent reading.

Most books and teacher training programs have abandoned this “sight word” approach and now focus on teaching children to analyze the letters in words and link each letter to a sound as a (print-to-speech, letter-to-sound) route to reading. This is an improvement to the sight word approach, but it is still not an optimal strategy for organizing the brain.  The more efficient approach is to teach children to assemble letters to build words first.  That’s how words became visible in the first place.

The most dramatic new discovery is that if dyslexic readers are provided intensive special tutoring and improve their reading skills, one can literally see that the brain changes its pattern of activity to produce a more efficient way of reading. These new insights, based not on theories but on the actual brains of actual readers have led to new ways of thinking about how to introduce children to the alphabet and to reading, and how to prevent reading difficulties.

Reading is a new human skill. Humans have been using some form of language in verbal communication for about two million years, but reading and writing have only been around for a few thousand.  We don’t know what early language sounded like but whatever its form, it’s pretty clear that language, and the capacity of the human brain to organize and express it, changed and evolved over the eons to accommodate more and more complex conversations.  Mothers found ways to tell their children how to keep out of trouble, and fathers found ways to brag about the hunt as the family gathered around the stew pot.

So it’s not surprising that our children, the inheritors of that ancient legacy, are able by the age of three to ask for orange juice, and tell us why they don’t want to go to grandma’s house today.  Their brains have pre-developed locations of cells, sophisticated programs and elaborate connections to deal with the complexities of speaking. Their brains start out with an efficient neural organization for speech, but not for reading.  It is the instruction children receive that will determine how these pathways are laid down.

In future posts to this blog, I will try to report more on how these important connections get made. Are there any specific topics that you wish to hear me discuss in a blog post? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

The Institute reports,

“The incidence of autism by age 5 in California has increased from slightly over 6 in 10,000 children born in 1990 to more than 42 in 10,000 for children born in 2001.”

This is an estimated 600-700% increase!  Less than one-tenth of the increase can be attributed to inclusion of milder cases, and only 24% of the increase can be attributed to earlier age of diagnosis.  Another 120% is possibly attributable to changes in diagnostic criteria.  So, really only about one third of the increase can be explained by those factors

So what’s left?  The environment!  The Institute suggests that a careful look at environmental exposures is warranted, especially for their possible affect on genetically susceptible children. They are doing some fascinating studies that I will try to comment on in future blogs.