Kids take different neural paths to reach print mastery

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LITERACY - Evolution of Language - How the Brain Works

Pedagogy Problems to Solutions

Sync Sense, Social Rhythm Research Experts
Speech, Music, Reading, & Technology
Motivation, Play, Culturally Relevant Content
Using Multiple Intelligences and different learning styles
Literacy Defined: how to read, how to write, how to use
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Read All About It
Kids take different neural paths to reach print mastery
Bruce Bower

Ethan refused to play with the children who attended his first-birthday
party. He ignored the presents that they brought for him. When Ethan's
father tried to hold him in his lap, the boy wriggled free and returned to
his true passion-scanning printed material. On this special day, Ethan
plopped on the floor by his father's chair and intensely perused a pile of
magazines. Although Ethan couldn't read, print riveted his attention with a
power that neither brand-new toys nor gooey birthday cake could approach.


       TEXT MESSENGERS. Certain brain structures appear to play critical
roles in skilled readers.
       PhotoDisc


Ethan's romance with print blossomed with time. At age 1, he scrutinized
each license plate in the supermarket parking lot. At 2 1/2, he placed
letter-emblazoned blocks in alphabetic order and corrected his mother, by
moving her hand, when she pointed to the wrong line of text while reading to
him. However, the boy was 3 before he uttered his first spoken word.

Now nearly 11 years old and attending fourth grade in a public school, Ethan
reads words and spells as well as most high school seniors do, although his
comprehension of written passages is only average for his age. He's also
learning to read Hebrew. Ethan talks to other children awkwardly and has
difficulty maintaining conversations.

Scientists refer to Ethan's unusual condition, which afflicts roughly 1 in
5,000 people, as hyperlexia. Initially described in 1967, hyperlexia
combines autismlike speech and social problems with a jump-start on reading.
As the first precocious reader of this kind to submit to a brain-imaging
analysis, Ethan stands at the forefront of scientific efforts to understand
how the brain underwrites reading. In a report last year, a team at
Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington, D.C., outlined the
neural structures that foster Ethan's advanced grasp of printed words.

Since then, these and other researchers have accumulated evidence on neural
regions that contribute to skilled reading of both Western-style alphabetic
text and non-alphabetic systems, such as Chinese writing. These findings are
beginning to show how learning to read triggers certain universal brain
accommodations, no matter what the language. At the same time, other brain
responses critical for effective reading vary with the nature of one's
writing system.

Increased understanding of the neural building blocks of successful reading
may inspire improved forms of reading instruction. For now, brain research
on Ethan and normal readers underscores the resilience and adaptability of
each person's brain, so that there's more than one way to become a good
reader, says G. Reid Lyon of the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development in Bethesda, Md.

Full Text at ScienceNews
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050430/bob9.asp

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