To summarize, beginning readers rely on visual recognition information and use both Broca’s area and the developing visual word form area to slowly analyze each word. Intermediate and skilled readers, on the other hand, rely mainly on the visual word form area to process and direct information to interconnected sites, rapidly producing meaning from words, with only marginal help from Broca’s area when needed. As we shall see later on, children and adults with reading difficulties, including dyslexia, show patterns of brain activation when reading that are distinctly different from those described here.
TWO ROUTES TO READING
After mid adolescence, the visual recognition and language processing systems needed for reading are fully operational in most people. A skilled reader is born. Through practice, the VWFA is assigning meaning directly to word forms, so reading speed is increasing along with comprehension. No longer does the reader have to sound out the phonemes when reading dog, because the VWFM provides the word and the meaning necessary to form the mental image of a dog and not an elephant or a rabbit. And all that happens in a fraction of a second.
Other cerebral areas are recruited as needed to process more complex sentence structure and syntax. Exactly how all these systems work is still not completely understood, but researchers are making progress. By observing what happens to the reading abilities of patients who have had strokes or lesions in these brain areas, researchers conclude that written words seem to be processed by two cerebral routes. These routes coexist and support one another to provide the reader with pronunciation and meaning quickly and accurately (Dehaene, 2009; Gazzaniga, Ivry, & Mangun, 2002).
When we encounter a word that we see frequently, we use a direct lexical or vocabulary-centered route that first identifies the letters (in the orthographic lexicon), next selects the word and its meaning (in the semantic lexicon), and then uses the phonological information (in the phonological lexicon) to retrieve its pronunciation. This direct route—letters to word/meaning to pronunciation—is used for most words, as long as they occur frequently and are stored in the reader’s various mental dictionaries (Figure 2.7).
However, when the word is novel or rare, we use a phonological route (Figure 2.8). On this route, the visual recognition system decodes the string of letters, then signals the language areas for the corresponding phonemes to help with pronunciation, and finally communicates with the frontal lobe in an attempt to find meaning in the sound pattern. Meaning may be difficult to find if the word is not in the mental lexicon, or is pronounced very differently than it is written, such as island, colonel, or Wednesday. This indirect route—letters to sounds to meaning—is helpful when we are learning new words.
Reading fluency requires that these two routes work in close coordination. Each contributes to the total reading experience depending on what type of word is being read and processed. In an expert adult reader, these routes are working so closely together in parallel that rapid comprehension may give the appearance that there is a single route. But research findings from scans and patient case studies suggest that fluent and proficient reading requires the brain regions to be organized into multiple parallel paths. Even at this printing, some researchers are suggesting that the dual-route model oversimplifies what is really going on in the brain during reading.
Figure 2.7 This diagram illustrates the direct processing route taken when the reader sees a familiar written word, such as band. The brain recovers the meaning and identity of the word through the orthographic and semantic lexicons and then uses the phonological information to pronounce it.
SOURCE: Adapted from Dehaene (2009); Gazzaniga et al. (2002).
Figure 2.8 This diagram illustrates the indirect route taken when the word is unfamiliar. The brain sends additional signals along multiple paths to determine if enough orthographic, phonologic, and semantic data are present to interpret the word, pronounce it, and find its meaning.
SOURCE: Adapted from Dehaene (2009); Gazzaniga et al. (2002).
Eye Movements During Reading
Only the central part of the eye, called the fovea, is the area on the retina of highest resolution. Consequently, when we read, our eyes make rapid movements across the page, called saccades, stopping for certain periods of time, called fixations. It is during these fixations of about 200 to 250 milliseconds that the eyes actually acquire information from the text. As you read this, your eyes are making four or five of those saccades per second in order to comprehend this text. Then the eyes take about 20 to 40 milliseconds to move to the next fixation point, a distance of about seven to nine letter spaces. This is a very small number but appears to represent the most information that our brain systems can process in one fixation.
During this time, vision is suppressed, and no new information enters the processing system. Skilled readers also move their eyes backward about 10 to 15 percent of the time in order to reread material. These regressions are needed when the reader has difficulty comprehending the text (Rayner, 2009; Rayner, Foorman, Perfetti, Pesetsky, & Seidenberg, 2001). It is interesting to note that in languages that are read from left to right, our span of vision detects more letters to the right than to the left of the fixation point. But in languages that are read from right to left, as in Hebrew and Arabic, the visual span reads more characters to the left than to the right. In other words, our eye movement strategies adapt to our native language’s reading protocols.
Research studies on eye movements during reading lend further support to the notion that beginning and skilled readers are processing written information differently. Beginning readers fixate on every word in a text, and they often fixate on the same word several times. Their fixation points are only about three letter spaces apart, and their fixation periods run longer, from 300 to 400 milliseconds. Furthermore, up to 50 percent of their eye movements are regressions. These eye movements most likely indicate the difficulty the beginning reader is having encoding the text. The longer fixation time may also result from the slower process of word analysis that occurs in the brain’s visual word form area. Table 2.4 shows a comparison of the eye movements of novice and skilled readers.
Research into how eye movements affect reading in adults has produced some interesting results (Häikiö, Bertram, Hyönä, & Niemi, 2009; Rayner, Slattery, & Bélanger, 2010). It confirms that slow readers have a smaller perceptual span than fast readers. However, there was little difference in the slow and fast readers’ ability to identify the words they were reading. This finding supports earlier explanations that slow readers use more cerebral processing resources to comprehend the words they are fixated on than do fast readers.
Another finding was that the spacing of letters within a word and the spacing between words affected the reading rate. Studies showed that reducing the spacing between letters increased the reading rate, provided the spacing between words was slightly increased (Paterson & Jordan, 2010; Rayner et al., 2010). Researchers suggested that increasing the spacing between words makes it easier for the eye to demarcate the beginnings and endings of words, thereby aiding comprehension and increasing the speed of reading.
THE IMPORTANCE OF PRACTICE
It is evident that learning to read requires significant reorganization of the visual recognition and language processing areas of the brain. New neuronal connections and broader cerebral networks need to be established. Strengthening these connections and building disparate networks comes through repetition and practice. The more frequently these pathways are activated, the faster and more consolidated they become. Consequently, for most children, reading improves with practice. Experience in reading improves several components of the decoding and comprehension processes (Joseph, 2007; Rayner et al., 2001). For example, practice does each of the following:
• Allows the mental lexicons and the visual word form area of the brain to acquire increasingly accurate representations of a word’s spelling and meaning, thereby strengthening the connection between how the word sounds (the phonological form) and its s
pelling (the orthographic representation). This is called the phonological-orthographic connection. The stronger this connection, the faster one reads.
• Results in an increasing facility with words because it increases the quality of the words’ representation in the lexicon, thereby enhancing comprehension.
• Turns low-frequency words into high-frequency words, improving the fluency of reading. Fluency involves developing rapid and automatic word-identification processes as well as bridging the gap between word recognition and comprehension.
• Increases familiarity with the patterns of letters that form printed words, thereby improving spelling. This is referred to as the lexical-orthographic connection. It is not the same as the phonological-orthographic connection. Both contribute in their own way to support the brain’s ability to read words.
• Improves comprehension because the reader is exposed to both familiar and new words used in many different contexts. This helps the reader recognize that two words can have the same spelling, but have different meanings, grammatical functions, and pronunciation, such as: “I lead a team that tests our drinking water for lead and other metals.”
Less able readers are likely to get less practice than more able readers. Consequently, the gap between more and less able readers increases over time. It is not surprising, then, that studies have found that reading ability in kindergarten was a strong predictor of reading ability in Grade 8 (Adlof, Catts, & Lee, 2010). This evidence contradicts a common belief that initial differences in reading ability wash out over time.
Being a Skilled Reader
Skilled readers do not read each word individually, nor do their eyes move from word to word until they reach the end. Rather, they scan the text searching for patterns that will make the task of reading easier. To illustrate this, look at the following block of text and note any irregularities:
QQQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQ
QQQQQPQQ
QQQQQQQQ
QOQQQQQQ
QQQQQQQQ
What did you notice? Most people will spot the letter “P” almost immediately, but miss the letter “O” in the fifth line. This illustrates the selectivity of vision. We notice something that violates the pattern but skim over something that very closely resembles it. These expectations of conformity guide our reading and allow us to increase our reading speed. This activity also shows the faster we read, the more detail we miss.
Another interesting characteristic of skilled reading is that the phonologic module becomes so adept at recognizing common words that it can do so even if the word is significantly misspelled. Can you understand the following text?
Aoccdrnig to rseerach at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht order the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer is in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses, and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey letetr by itslef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Most skilled readers can read this paragraph despite the misspellings. Apparently, the beginning and ending letters as well as the context supply enough clues for the phonologic module to recognize the words and determine meaning. This example illustrates how reading modifies the native capabilities of our brain to acquire an amazing culture skill. Reading enhances our language, visual, and memory systems. It “literally” changes our brain forever . . . pardon the pun.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION/REFLECTION
• What must a child be able to do in order to read effectively?
• What role does working memory play in learning to read?
• What happens in the brain when a child goes from a nonreader to a novice reader, and finally to a skilled reader?
What’s Coming?
That the brain learns to read at all attests to its remarkable ability to sift through seemingly confusing input and establish patterns and systems. For a few children with exceptional language skills, this process comes naturally; most, however, have to be taught. In the next chapter, we discuss some considerations that parents and teachers should keep in mind when teaching children to read.
3
Teaching Reading for Encoding and Decoding
Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
BRIEF HISTORY OF TEACHING READING
Reading instruction in the United States over the past 130 years has involved two general methods: an analytical method called the phonics approach and a global method that encompasses the whole-word and the whole-language approaches (Figure 3.1). Phonics instruction was the earliest method for teaching reading. Children were taught the letter names and simple syllables from which they then constructed words. Emphasis was on phonics drills. In this analytical approach, bits of words were used to build syllables, then words and meaningful phrases.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the emphasis shifted to a more global approach, and choral reading emerged. Students would spell the syllable aloud together and then pronounce it. A few decades later, the pendulum swung back, and phonics drill returned. But dissatisfaction with this method arose again in the 1940s, and the emphasis shifted back to a global approach known as whole-word instruction. The whole-word method placed little emphasis on phonics drill and more on recognizing entire words as the meaningful units of reading. The teacher showed the students a flash card with a word on it. After the teacher pronounced the word, the children would say it aloud. The small set of beginning vocabulary words was gradually expanded.
Figure 3.1 The timeline from 1870 to the present shows how the predominant method of reading instruction has alternated between analytical and global approaches. Today, the emphasis has shifted toward a balanced and comprehensive approach that seeks to combine phonics instruction with enriched reading text.
One major reason for advocating the whole-word approach was that the irregularities in the pronunciation of common words, such as pint (which violates the pattern of hint, mint, tint, etc.) and have (which violates the pattern of gave, pave, save, etc.), meant that the letter-to-phoneme correspondence was not very reliable. Therefore, emphasis should be on learning to memorize the pronunciation of whole words, not parts of words. Another argument for whole-word instruction was that it promoted comprehension early in the learning of reading: Words have meaning; speech sounds do not (Larson, 2004; Rayner et al., 2001).
In the early 1970s, concerns over the poor results on standardized reading tests prompted a shift in emphasis back to phonics drill. At the same time, a psycholinguistic approach to reading was emerging, based on the work of Smith and Goodman (1971). Psycholinguistic advocates suggested that reading was like a guessing game in which readers determined meaning through a variety of redundant cuing systems present in rich literature. This approach, which became known as the whole-language method, also suggested that phonics not be taught separately because the drills could be boring and failed to show the child that learning to read could be enjoyable. The proponents of phonics, however, were not convinced that the whole-language method (now also called the literature-based method) was effective. Thus, the so-called reading wars began in earnest and continued through the 1990s.
The reading wars are essentially over, although remnants of them still linger. In recent years, experience has taught us that no one mix of instructional strategies and curriculum materials will work for every child. As a result of the reports of the National Research Council (Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998), the National Reading Panel (NRP, 2000), and the development of the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (NGA & CCSSO, 2010), many educators now recognize that the teaching of reading should use a balanced and comprehensive approach that includes a phonics component as well as enriched text. Furthermore, school districts in the United States need to consider whether their reading program is based sufficiently on scientific research to meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, although the act had not
been reauthorized at the time of publication.
Basic Rationale for the Balanced and Comprehensive Approach
The balanced and comprehensive approach is based on the following considerations:
• No one reading program is the best program for all children.
• Children need to develop phonemic awareness in order to learn to read successfully.
• Children need to master the alphabetic principle.
• Phonics are important but should not be taught as a separate unit through drill and rote memorization.
• Phonics should be taught to develop spelling strategies and word analysis skills.
• An important component is learning to read for meaning (comprehension).
• At the appropriate time, introducing enriched literature helps students develop a positive disposition toward reading and develops their ability to think imaginatively and critically.
There is still some debate about what constitutes a balanced and comprehensive reading program. For instance, although many states have adopted the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts, some groups are already expressing concern over what types of assessment and evaluation components will accompany them. Regardless of their biases and perspectives, educators, parents, and policy makers must now recognize that scientific research has given us important insights about how the brain learns to read that cannot be ignored. We know it is a complex process, and science certainly does not have all the answers. But the information we have to date can help teachers of reading make curricular and instructional choices that are more likely to result in their students becoming successful readers.
How the Brain Learns to Read Page 9
