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Jan
29
Being a good reader may depend on how your brain is wired
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Reading, Special Education
The latest research into reading ability suggests that whether you’re a good reader or not may depend on how your brain is wired.
New brain-imaging technologies and a spate of recent studies suggest that reading aptitude is better understood as a spectrum of abilities related to biological architecture than as a universally acquirable skill.
A study that followed 7-12 year old kids for three years found a correlation between the connections between neurons or the white matter in the brain, specifically in the thick band of neurons that connect the brain’s hemispheres, and a persons reading aptitude.
The piece of the brain that’s important for detecting moving objects and patterns wasn’t functioning as well in the kids who were poor readers
Researchers suggest that these findings could lead to discovering ways that could be used to help support poor readers by having computers or other text imaging devices compensate for neurological difference.
If this is the case, (researchers are careful to note that the results are very preliminary) then the way we would support poor readers would change since a person’s reading aptitude is actually a function of his or her brain architecture and not a function of acquiring reading skills.
Does this mean that weak readers could use some sort of devise to help them read in the same way that students with weak vision use their glasses to help them see or kids with poor hearing use hearing aides to help them hear? Kind of an interesting thought. I wonder if Apple is following the research or maybe even maybe thinking of funding it. Imagine the potential. There are so many kids who are poor readers.
The other thought I had about the research when I read it was that it was done on kids between the ages of 7-12. We know that the brain continues to grow and develop well into the late teens and early 20’s. Would the quality and quantity of the connections between the neurons of a more mature 20 year old brain still account for poor reading the way it did in those 7-12 year old brains or is something else at work as well. Could it be that kids have pretty well given up on reading by the time they are 20n and their brains have matured enough so that they can be stronger readers? I guess we’ll just have to wait for more research to be done to now those answers.
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