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The Reading Brain: InformingInstruction, Prediction of Dyslexia, and

Reading in a Digital AgePATTAN Maryanne Wolf

The Reading Brain: Informing Instruction, Prediction of Dyslexia, and

Reading in a Digital Age PATTAN Maryanne Wolf

The Center for Reading and

Language Research

Committed to the pursuit of multi-disciplinary research about how the brain learns to read across all ages and stages of development

UCLA Center for Dyslexia, Diverse Learners,

and Social Justice

Gene

Cognitive Classroom

Behaviors Tales from Neuroscience: How the Reading Brain Informs

Connecting Evolving Knowledge

Bases

Brain Cell/ Areas Neuron

Neural Circuits

Part I: Learning to Read and Reading Deeply

Part Two: Dyslexia

Part Three: Prediction and Intervention

Part Four: Deep Reading in a Digital Age

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Preface: The Mystery The human brain was never born to read

or multiply numbers or program.

How then does the human brain learn

new cognitive functions?

The Plastic Reading Brain Circuit

Principles of the Brain’s Plasticity within Limits for Cultural Inventions

1. 2. 3. Ability to form Ability to Depends on whole new recycle and environment/ connected repurpose limits circuits areas

DehaDehaene, 2015ene, 2015

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Whole New Reading Circuit

Existing circuits

of neurons

Originally designed for vision,

language, & cognition

Brain can rearrange itself in multiple ways to read, depending on writing system, medium, and individual variation.

Bolger, Perfetti, & Schneider

Multiple Circuits | Plasticity of Reading Brain

How does the Young Brain Learn to Read?

PART ONE: The Developing Brain

Each new reader must create a new reading

circuit from older cognitive and linguistic

structures and their connections

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Best To Start Early… And Invest Wisely…

Source: Dr. Jacques Vandergaag, University of Amsterdam, 2004

Phonemes Orthography Semantics Syntax Morphology

Phoneme Awareness

Explicit emphasis on

sounds’ representations

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Semantic Development in Every Book and

Story

32 Million Word Gap

Replication of Hart and Risley

Quality of early language interaction predicts later

development in low income families Hirsh-Pasek et al, 2015

Books From Birth AAP Literacy Recommendations

Shared reading “stimulates optimal patterns of brain development at a critical time in child development, which, in turn, builds language, 

literacy, and social‐emotional skills that last a lifetime.”

High, P. C. and P. Klass (2014). "Literacy promotion: an essential component of primary care pediatric practice.”

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Unnecessary Debate

Study 1: Quantitative Home Reading Environment and Neural Activation During Story Listening in 

Preschoolers 3‐5 y/o: John Hutton, Cincinnati Hospital

•Semantic Processing (Understanding) •Visual Imagery •Controlled for household income

Semantic network

Left Hemisphere

1. Adapted from S. Dehaene, “Reading the Brain,” 2010. 2. Hutton, et al. Pediatrics, 2015.

Study 2: Maternal Shared Reading Engagement and Neural Activation During Story Listening in 4 y/o low‐

SES girls

•Expressive language •Complex language processing •Social-emotional integration •Working memory/attention

Left Hemisphere

1. Adapted from S. Dehaene, “Reading the Brain,” 2010. 2. Hutton, et al. In Submission, 2016; presented at PAS 2016.

”Goldilocks” Effect

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Illustrated story-reading by adult has significantly better effects on early language development than either an auditory version or an animated one. John Hutton, Cincinnati Hospital for Children

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Representations of Letters &

Letter Patterns

Conventions of Print

Left to Right Scanning

Developing Knowledge of Different Phrase & Sentence Structures

Increases Fluency

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Eliot)

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Semantic and Syntactic Processes (with George

Representations of Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots

(Morphemes)

Increases Fluency by Orthographic chunks, Semantic & Syntactic

Knowledge

Decoding plus “Deep Reading” Connected in Milliseconds in Medium of Print

Dehaene, 2015

At the heart of reading, 100 to 200 milliseconds allow us

“time to think our own new thoughts”.

The Heart of Expert

Deep Reading

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Background Knowledge

Perspective Taking/Empathy

Critical Analysis

Novel Thought

Inference, Deduction/Induction Analogical Thinking

Imagery

Insight & Reflection

Deep Reading Background Knowledge

“Reading is cumulative and proceeds with geometric progression: each new

reading builds upon what the reader has read before.”

Albert Manguel, A History of Reading

Background Knowledge New Matthew Effect for Background Knowledge

Will it be threatened by too early over‐reliance on external sources of knowledge?

Will this impede use of analogical and inferential thought?

“The rich get richer and the poor poorer.

...Matthew 4:23

(Stanovich for vocabulary)

“

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THE TALE WITHIN A TALE:

“Here is the Golden Key. It is the capacity to pass over to others and come back to ourselves. We all have the capacity, but we

do not all discover it, come to use it, learn to

pass over. “

-Fr. John S. Dunne

Perspective Taking

•Theory of Mind

•Empathy

•Compassion

Bernhardt & Singer, 2012

Empathy

40% decline in empathy in our youth over 20 years, with most in last 10 

years.

Sarah Konrath, Sherry Tukle

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Imagery, Empathy, and Hemingway’s Shortest Story

c

For Sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.

Sherlock Holmes and the ‘Scientific Method’ Processes

Analogy, Inferential/Deduction, and Critical Analysis

Miss Marple’s Secret Sauce: Empathy

Our deep reading brain favors Miss Marple.

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Critical Analysis & Vulnerability Insight and the Generative Processes

If background knowledge and inference are threatened, will critical analysis decline, leaving the reader susceptible to false information and demagoguery?

“An insight is a fleeting glimpse of the brain’s huge store of knowledge. The cortex is sharing one of its secrets.

‐ Jonah Lehrer

“

“We feel quite truly that our wisdom begins with that of the author…By a law which perhaps signifies that we can receive the truth from nobody, that which is the end of their wisdom appears to us as but the beginning of ours.”

Marcel Proust

“Nous sentons tres bien que notre sagesse

commence ou celle de l’auteur finit... “

The Deep Reading Brain

requires both milliseconds during the

reading act

and years of formation to change the “quality of attention” and depth of

thought.

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Deep Reading Brain Circuit and St. Thomas Aquinas

PART TWO: The Reading Brain, Dyslexia,  Prediction, Intervention

How does the brain learn to read in individuals with dyslexia? What is cerebrodiversity?

What is dyslexia and can we predict it before a child fails and becomes ...?

Why do some children fail to learn to read without dyslexia ?

The Diversity of Dyslexia

Arts & Science EntrepreneursAlexander Graham Bell Richard Branson Lewis Caroll John Chambers

Leonardo Da ViNnci Stephen Cloobeck

Antoni Gaudi Walt Disney

Pablo Picasso William Hewlett Robert Rauschenberg Steve Jobs Auguste Rodin Craig McCaw Steven Spielberg Anita Roddick

Nikola Tesla Charles Schwab

Ben Wolf Noam

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Integrative Approach to Dyslexia ResearchFumiko Hoeft UCSF

Brain electrical activity Brain structure & function

EEG fMRI DTI

MEG NIRS

MRI

EEG / MEG

Genetics Brain stimulation

TMS / tDCS

character traits, socio-emotional

Grit, Resilience, Mindset, Empathy

The Neuroscience of Dyslexia – Emerging View Focus Also on Strengths, Protective Factors & Resilience

visuo-spatial Holistic, 3d

cognitive explicit memory comprehension

IQ, reasoning, oral language …

RELATIVE STRENGTHS phonological processing

(visual/selective) attention

cognitive implicit procedural learning

short-term memory

information processing

RELATIVE WEAKNESSES

dd

Fumiko Hoeft UCSF

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Differences in white matter integrity across reading development

Wang et al., 2016

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Six Distinct Profiles of Early Reading

Ozernov-Palchik et al., 2016

Stability of Early Reading Profiles 1st grade

• 100% of children remained in the same groups

Ozernov-Palchik et al., 2016

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OO4

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Reading outcomes at the end of 2nd grade

Ozernov-Palchik et al., in prep

All children with dyslexia begin as

struggling readers, but not all struggling

readers are children with dyslexia

Brain Reading Plasticity Enviornment Practice

SES modulates risk reading outcomes

• Children from Low-SES families who were at risk in kindergarten were significantly more likely to become poor readers as compared to children from the High-SES group

16 %

44 %

High SES Low SES

Risk No Risk

Risk No Risk

Higher left ILF coherence in High SES

• The High-SES group had significantly higher FA values in the cluster adjacent to the visual word form area

Ozernov-Palchik et al., under review

Brain Reading Plasticity Enviornment Practice

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Slide 67

OO4 Change figure to different colors and legend in bottomOla Ozranov, 4/16/2018

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Brain Reading Plasticity Enviornment Practice

SES modulates brain reading outcomes

• Lower left ILF coherence in kindergarten was associated with worse 2nd grade reading outcomes in lower- but not higher-SES children

Ozernov-Palchik et al., under review

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The Forgotten Boys:African-American, Smart, Struggling, Doomed by Grade Four,Connected in Milliseconds

• Jeanne Chall’s last message• Special Issue in Reading and Writing: • Co-Editors Shawn Robinson & Corey Thompson

Part Three: Using the Reading Brain Circuit

to Inform Instruction and Intervention

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BEFORE READING BEGINS: Music, Rhythm, and Phoneme Awareness

• Tested over 150 students from preschool to 2nd grade

• Relationship between rhythm and phoneme awareness

• Music training in K: better reading in Gr 1.

Ozernov-Palchik, Wolf, Patel., in prep.

Music , Rhythm , and Reading

• Did Sandy Same or Dudley Different play the drums?

• Tested over a 150 students from preschool to 2nd grade

Ozernov-Palchik, Wolf, Patel., in prep

Rhythm Skills Were Associated with Early Literacy Across Development

Strong Beat: R=0.42, p<0.001, Weak Beat: R=0.22, p=0.06

Strong Beat: R=0.6, p<0.001, Weak Beat: R=0.28, p=0.1

Ozernov-Palchik, Wolf, Patel., under review

Increased Activation During Phonological Processing was Associated with Rhythm Performance:

Z = 42

Z = 47

Z = 52

Z = 37 4

6

8

10

12

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-2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 CT

OP

P M

emo

ry f

or

Dig

its

L_T-P_FSM Mean Activation

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Unnecessary

Debate

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Unnecessary Debate

Phonics emphases on explicit decoding principles and phoneme awareness

Whole Language emphases on implicit learning from words and texts

Dyslexia Paradox

Early intervention is best - Lovett, Wolf, Morris, et al., in press

Identification in Grade 2 or 3 is the norm.

- Nadine Gaab

Two Decades of

Intervention Studies Robin Morris, Maureen Lovett,

Maryanne Wolf

Components of the

Reading Brain Circuit (POSSuM)

Millisecond Connections

Deep Reading

Processes

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Reverse Engineering of Reading Brain

Components for Differences in Dyslexic Brain and Dysfluent

Readers

1. 2. Explicit “Deep reading”emphases on comprehensioncircuit parts processesand how words work

3. Their millisecond connections

SGrV

LM

LSVVMGr

VGrS

Grammar Processes

Sound Processes

Vocabulary Processes

Letter Processes

Morphological Processes

One Example of Multi-Component Intervention: RAVE-O and its Characters

Metacognitive Strategies Embodied in Characters for each Component of a Reading Circuit

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Many Interesting Meanings

Many Interesting

Connections

Strategies for Semantic Skills

Representations of Prefixes, Suffixes, Roots

”Secret Sauce” for Orthographic, Semantic &

Syntactic Knowledge

Polysemy and Semantic/Syntactic Flexibility

The bat bats with a bat.

Duck, duck. The duck ducked.

Sam tracked the tracks by the tracks.

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WRMT- Word Attack WRMT- Passage Comprehension

Effect Sizes avg .99 over 14 measures

Multi-component Intervention

Lovett, Frijters, Wolf et al., 2017

Early v. Later Intervention Effects

Test of Word Reading

Efficiency sight words

(raw scores)

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EUREKA-Italian translation: Traficante and Andolfi, 2017

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Developing Knowledge of PART FOUR:Literacy Increases

Using the Reading Brain Circuit Relationships

to Understand Deep Reading in a Engagement

Digital Age and its Implications for Mastery

the Next Generation Optimism

& Our SelvesSense of Well Being

As we move to digital mediums, what are the deeper implications of having a plastic reading circuit?

“The real question is whether the affordances of reading on screen lead us to a new normal, one in which length and complexity … and memory and especially concentration are proving more challenging.”

Baron, 2015–-CASBS 2013-14

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The Reading Circuit Reflects the Medium

Novelty Bias: The Basis of Distraction in Children and Adults

“Every medium has its costs and weaknesses; every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others…the Internet may develop impressive visual intelligence, the cost seems to

be to deep processing: mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking,

imagination and reflection.”

-Greenfield, 2009

“Humans will work just as hard to obtain a novel experience as we will to get a meal or a mate.”

Glut of Information & Sensory Overload in Youth and  Adults

Will our glut of information reduce our capacity to process it? Will we narrow ourselves to silos of

less dense information that conform to what we already thought?

Will changes in attention and

the expectation for constant, immediate information from

external platforms of knowledge threaten the

formation of deep reading in young

digital readers?

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Evidence “Skimming is the New Normal”

So is Distraction, Attention Switching, and Voluminous Information

In scanning, Less time on in- Decreased browsing, depth, sustained bouncing, concentrated attention and 1 2 3 keyword reading; novelty memory.spotting. bias:

Changes in attention and memory;

Comprehension of text and sequencing of details…

Anne Mangen; Guernsey & Levine

27 distractions an hour.

Dehaene, 2015 (Liu, 2005, 2009, 2014) (Baron,2014)(Barron,2014)

iPad is the New Pacifier Hyper Attention in Children

Differences in Early Language

Hirsh-Pasek et al Zuckerman & Radesky

Continuous partial attention and multi-tasking

Requires high levels of stimulation

Low-level threshold for boredom

Bathed in fight/flight hormones

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Deep Reading, Our Young, and Ourselves

Ensuring the formation and sustaining of deep reading is our best inoculation against their vulnerability (and ours) to false information, demagoguery, and indifference to “other”.

We can not go back to a pre-digital

time; but, we should not lurch forward without understanding

what we will lose, what we will gain,

for our species’ cognitive repertoire.

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Grammar Processes

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Can we help new readers to develop a bi-literate brain and to know when to skim and how to read deeply?

Can we design a digital learning system that redresses its own weaknesses and facilitates reflection and a new sense of “other”?

Can all children become literate?

Can we create an experience on a tablet that can help children learn to read who have inadequate or no

schools in remote parts of the world or our backyards?

C U R I O U S L E A R N I N G : A G l o b a l L i t e r a c y P r o j e c t C o l l a b o r a t i o n : T u f t s U n i v e r s i t y , M I T M E D I A L A B , G S U

SGrV

LM

LSV VMGr

VGrS

Sound Processes

Vocabulary Processes

Letter Processes

Morphological Processes

Reading Brain:

Basis for Curation

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Ethiopia

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Pope Francis

“Children are a sign. They are asign of hope, a sign of life, but also a 'diagnostic' sign, a marker indicating the health of families, society, and the entire world. Wherever children are accepted, loved, cared for and protected, the family is healthy, society is more healthy, and the world is more human."

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“

“Literacy alters the brain in profoundly transformative ways, which alters the person, which alters the species, which alters humanity

itself.” This is our shared mission. Thank you each.

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