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0-The Ultimate Question What Is Reading

The document discusses the complex neural processes involved in reading. It describes how multiple areas of the brain work simultaneously using both phonological and lexical processing to identify written words. First, light from the page enters the eye and is processed in the visual system. The word is then broken down into morphemes, syllables, and phonemes. Next, the brain uses both sounding out the word and accessing its meaning directly to identify the word. Finally, the correct meaning is supplied. Reading requires the integration of many distinct language representations in the brain.

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Ignacio Castellanos
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97 views

0-The Ultimate Question What Is Reading

The document discusses the complex neural processes involved in reading. It describes how multiple areas of the brain work simultaneously using both phonological and lexical processing to identify written words. First, light from the page enters the eye and is processed in the visual system. The word is then broken down into morphemes, syllables, and phonemes. Next, the brain uses both sounding out the word and accessing its meaning directly to identify the word. Finally, the correct meaning is supplied. Reading requires the integration of many distinct language representations in the brain.

Uploaded by

Ignacio Castellanos
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Think Ready Read

Orton-Gillingham based education blog


- See more at:
http://www.rlacortongillingham.com/category/scien
ce-of-reading/page/3/#sthash.YcwKL6cv.dpuf

The Ultimate Question…What is reading?


http://www.rlacortongillingham.com/ultimate-question/#sthash.HLjx2R2A.jmlAlB0P.dpbs

Humans are hard-wired for language. We have been using speech for around 100,000 years. There
are areas of our brains specifically designed to process the sounds and grammar of whatever language
we are exposed to at the beginning of our life. Reading, however, is another matter. Writing has
only been used for around 5,400 years, not long at all in the scheme of evolution. There is nothing
innate in our brains to create meaning from some back squiggles passing through our visual
field. Yet amazingly, portions of our brains that developed for different tasks have been reassigned
to allow us to read with seemingly little effort. I hope that this quick glimpse into the astounding and
complicated science of reading will help you appreciate the significance of your role helping students
learn to read.

Multiple areas of the brain are used in the process of reading.

To help illustrate all the things that happen when you read a word, let’s follow the word “reading” as
you process it. First, the retina receives light reflected off the page or screen. Only the fovea, the
center of the retina, is sensitive enough to be useful for this task though. That’s why we have to scan
across the page as we read. As we scan, we can only process 10-12 letters at a time.
The amount of visual process is astounding. Good readers read 400-500 words per minute. If we say
the average length of each word is 5 letters, that’s 2,500 letters per minute, or about 41 letters every
second!

Another amazing feat of our visual processing is called invariance. That means our brain recognizes
a letter whether it is CAPITAL or lowercase, bold or italic, small or large, and in whatever font.

Next, the word is broken down. Think back to our example “reading”. Your brain separates the
suffix “ing” from the root “read”. These are the morphemes that make the word. Morphemes are the
smallest units of language that carry meaning. Your brain would break down syllables next: in our
example though, read is only one syllable. And finally it would break down the individual
consonants and vowels.

Now your brain has identified the parts of the word “reading” on the screen. Time to figure out what
it means!
For a while there was a great debate about whether words are “sounded out” in the brain,
phonological processing, or whether there was a direct route from letter strings to meanings, lexical
processing. It turns out that both types of processing are at work simultaneously to help us identify
the meaning of the squiggles on the page. *Note: this is true in adults who are good
readers. Beginning and struggling readers need instruction and practice to develop these pathways.
We do have direct access to the meaning of words without mentally sounding them out. At the same
time though, our brain processes the sounds of even familiar words we have seen a thousand
times. When we encounter an unfamiliar word:
 you rely more on phonological processing, actually sounding out the word in our head;
 You’re also using phonological processing when checking your students papers for
misspellings;
 Fluent reading uses both routes and varies depending on the word and the task.

Through either route, our brain still has to figure out which word we are seeing and what meaning
corresponds to it. Most recent models of the brain’s system to identify a word work like people at a
banquet waiting to see who wins the raffle:

Imagine there is someone holding a ticket for every word in your vocabulary. The winning
word appears on the screen: “read”. Everyone looks at their ticket to see if they won. The
person with “red” is about to shout out but someone points out that he doesn’t have an “a” in
his word. Someone with “bead” wants to shout out but someone notices that it rhymes, but
the beginning sound is different. Finally, person with “read” shouts out. No one argues
because he fits the word and he wins the prize, getting to supply the meaning of the word.

Whew, I’m tired just thinking about all the work my brain did to read that one word, especially
considering that it was a very brief overview of what happens in the brain. It’s nothing short of
amazing that we are able to read and comprehend so quickly and without consciously putting forth
any effort.

Current Status of Treatments for Dyslexia: Critical Review


Ann W. Alexander, MD; Anne-Marie Slinger-Constant, MD
Disclosures
J Child Neurol. 2004;19(10):744-758.

Rumelhart et al. observed that reading can be viewed as an interactive process between information processed
from current sensory information (bottom up) and the meaning of what has been read (top down). The
connectionist models support this view. Oral reading is the most demanding, and Figure 4 represents the neural
components necessary for the development of this skill. A combination and integration of distinct phonologic,
morphologic, orthographic, and semantic representations for the decoding of a word are optimal for normal
reading development (accurate and automatic decoding) according to Snowling and Nation. Harm and
Seidenberg's computer simulations confirm the need for this interplay. Articulatory and prosodic representations
are necessary for appropriate oral production but also for enhancement of phonologic, morphologic, and
semantic maps. Without efficient phonologic and morphologic decoding ability, the reader must rely on context
(semantic and syntactic cues). The transition into fluent reading with comprehension depends on developing
orthographic automaticity but also on syntactic competence and semantic strength.

The development of skilled oral reading.a visual schematic illustrating the neural substrates and networks needed for the
optimal development of skilled (fluent, with appropriate expression and comprehension) oral reading. The stoplights serve
to illustrate whether the neural substrates allow for efficient networking ( green ), as is shown here. They can be used to
explain treatment plans, illustrating when substrates are suboptimal, resulting in a "bottleneck" ( yellow ), or are
nonexistent, requiring a "detour."

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