A study at Stanford University found that beginning readers who focus on letter-sound relationships, or phonics, instead of trying to learn whole words, increase activity in the area of their brains “best wired for reading”. The study by Professor Bruce McCandliss of the Graduate School of Education and the Stanford Neuroscience Institute, and two colleagues, was released in May 2015 in the journal Brain and Language.
The researchers devised a new written language and contrasted whether words were taught using a letter-to-sound instruction method or a whole-word association method. After learning multiple words under both approaches, the newly learned words were presented in a reading test to the subjects while their brainwaves were monitored.
Words learned through the letter-sound instruction elicited neural activity biased toward the left side of the brain, which encompasses visual and language regions. In contrast, words learned via whole-word association showed activity biased toward right hemisphere processing.
The study’s participants who were taught using a letter-to-sound instruction method were subsequently able to read new ‘words’ they had never seen before, as long as they followed the same letter-sound patterns they were taught to focus on in the training. When the same participants memorized whole-word associations, the study found that they learned sufficiently to recognize those particular words on the reading test, but the underlying brain circuitry differed.
While this study used adult participants, the author saw implications for teaching children to read. “These contrasting teaching approaches are likely having such different impact on early brain responses because they encourage the learner to focus their attention in different ways,” McCandliss said. He noted that strong left hemisphere engagement during early word recognition is a hallmark of skilled readers, and is characteristically lacking in children and adults who are struggling with reading. “Ideally, that is the brain circuitry we are hoping to activate in beginner readers.”
Compiled from:
Reading: Brain waves study shows how different teaching methods affect reading development. ScienceDaily: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150601092204.htm
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/reading-brain-phonics-052815.html
Hemispheric specialization for visual words is shaped by attention to sublexical units during initial learning, Yuliya N. Yonchevaa, Jessica Wise, Bruce McCandliss, Brain and Language, Volumes 145–146, June–July 2015, Pages 23–33 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0093934X15000772
