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The Changing Reading Brain of the 21st Century: The Importance of “Knowing what we do not Know” for the Future of How We Think

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Support de l'intervention de Marianne Wolf lors de la 1ère session des Entretiens du Nouveau Monde Industriel 2012.

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Marianne Wolf

The Changing Reading Brain of the 21st Century: The Importance of “Knowing what we do

not Know” for the Future of How We Think

Page 2: Marianne Wolf

Center for Reading and Language Research

• Maryanne Wolf, Director

• Stephanie Gottwald, Asst. Director, Linguistics, Teacher Training

• Yashira Perez, Genes, Dyslexia, African-American & Latino children

• Cathy Moritz, Music and Reading

• Yvonne Gill (Arizona) and Lynne Miller, Curriculum Development for RAVE-O Basic and Plus

• Mirit Barzillai, Semantics, Global Literacy, Technology

• Elizabeth Norton, Brain Imaging in Early Predictors of Dyslexia

• Kate Ullman, African-American Dialect and Reading

• Surina Basho, Memory and Dyslexia Subtypes

• Melissa Orkin, Affective Development and Dyslexia

Page 3: Marianne Wolf

I am deeply indebted to...

Heidi Bally

Cinthia Coletti Haan

Ulrike Kesper-Grossman and Paul Grossman

Rossella and Aurelio Maria Mottola

Page 4: Marianne Wolf

Great transitions in Communication

11Non- language to Oral Language

22Oral Language toWritten Language

33Written Language toDigital Culture

Page 5: Marianne Wolf

What can we know?

What should we do?

What may we hope?

Three Questions of Kant (Dunne, 2012)

Page 6: Marianne Wolf

1. Can what we know about the evolution of the reading brain

inform the future, digital culture?

2. Can what we know about the reading brain illumine what we do not

know about how reading and thought will develop in the next generation?

3. Can knowledge about the “reading brain”, combined with multiple ways of

knowing---exemplified by Socrates, Proust, and Nicholas of Cusa--- propel a more hopeful approach to our transition?

What can we Know from

Neurosciences?

Page 7: Marianne Wolf

1. Can what we know about the evolution of the reading brain inform the future, digital culture ?

Page 8: Marianne Wolf

An Approach to the Study of Reading from Cognitive Neurosciences

Page 9: Marianne Wolf

The human brain was never born to read.

How did the human brain learn to read with

no genetic program or specific reading center?

Page 10: Marianne Wolf

Dehaene, 2009

“Neuronal Recycling” for Literacy

Page 11: Marianne Wolf

Principles of Brain Design Underpinning Cultural Inventions

•Ability to form new

connected circuits

• Capacity for “working

groups” of neurons to

specialize (pattern

recognition)

• Capacity for

automatization

Two Pyramidals,Greg Dunn

Page 12: Marianne Wolf

“Neuronal Niche” (Dehaene,2009)

For First Logographic Symbols

Y

Page 13: Marianne Wolf

Evidence for Neuronal Recycling and Possibly Proto-letters

Dehaene’s Studies of Numeracy in Primates

Studies of Baboons and Orthographic Learning

Grainger et al.

New Studies of Non-Literate Children in

Ethiopia-Tufts and MIT Media Lab

Page 14: Marianne Wolf
Page 15: Marianne Wolf
Page 16: Marianne Wolf

Earlier Tablets: Sumerian

Earliest emphases on

phonology, orthography, semantics, syntax, and

morphology(Cohen, 2000)

Page 17: Marianne Wolf

Greek Writing and the Alphabetic Principle

The insight that words are made up of

sounds and each sound can be signified

by a symbol.

Page 18: Marianne Wolf

Multiple Circuits of Reading Brain

English

Chinese & Kanji

Japanese Kana

Brain can rearrange itself in multiple ways

to read, depending on writing system and medium.

Bulger, Perfetti, & Schneider

Page 19: Marianne Wolf

Each new reader must create a new reading

circuit from older cognitive and

linguistic structures and their connections

How does the Young Brain Learn to Read?

Page 20: Marianne Wolf

Martinos MIT Imaging Center

Page 21: Marianne Wolf

Early Reading Brain: Everything Matters in the Development of the

Reading Circuit

Page 22: Marianne Wolf

Particularly, Language Development

Phonemes

Orthographic Patterns

Semantics

Syntax

Morphology

Page 23: Marianne Wolf
Page 24: Marianne Wolf

Expert Deep Reading” Brain on Proust

Page 25: Marianne Wolf

The Heart of Expert Reading

At the heart of reading,100 to 200 milliseconds allow us “time to think new thoughts”.

Page 26: Marianne Wolf

“We feel quite truly that our wisdom begins with that of the author…By a law which perhaps signifies that we can receive the truth from nobody, that which is the end of their wisdom appears to us as but the beginning of ours.”

Marcel Proust“Nous sentons tres bien que notre sagesse commence ou

celle de l’auteur finit... “

Page 27: Marianne Wolf

“Deep Reading”

“Slower”, concentrated cognitive processes encouraged in present expert reading brain

Page 28: Marianne Wolf

Inference

Analogical Thinking

Critical Analysis and Deliberation

Insight and Epiphany

Contemplation

Going beyond the wisdom of the author

Page 29: Marianne Wolf

2. Can what we know about the Reading Brain

illumine what we do not know about how reading

and thought will develop in a digital culture?

Page 30: Marianne Wolf

What are the deeper implications of having a plastic reading circuit as we move to a

digitally dominated set of mediums?

Page 31: Marianne Wolf

How do we think on-line?

“The scariest thing about Stanley Kubrick’s vision wasn’t that computers started to act like people but that people had started to act like computers. We’re beginning to process information as if we’re nodes; it’s all about the speed of locating and reading data.

We’re transferring our intelligence into the machine, and the machine is transferring its way of thinking into us.”

Nick Carr in “Do you trust Google?”, WIRED, Jan. 2008

Page 32: Marianne Wolf

37

Cognitive characteristics of on-line reading

in the digital reading brain

Continuous partial attention; less sustained attention and focus

“Set” for immediacy and speed of processing

Faster multi-tasking of large sets of information

Page 33: Marianne Wolf

Differences in Attention: “Skimming is the new normal”

Scanning, browsing, bouncing, keyword spotting (Liu, 2005, 2009)

Less time on in-depth, concentrated reading

Psychological reflex to “click” and move “set”

Decreased sustained attention

Page 34: Marianne Wolf

More attention to visual, external imagery

Less emphases on touch and materiality

Less internalization of knowledge, and more dependence on external sources

Page 35: Marianne Wolf

Cognitive Effects of Multi-tasking: Brain Imaging Studies

“Even if we can learn while distracted, it changes how you learn, making the learning less efficient and useful”

“Multitasking hinders learning”Russ Poldrack (2006)

Proceedings from National Academy of Science

Page 36: Marianne Wolf

Touch and Materiality Factors: Kinesthesia and Synesthesia Emphases in

Screen and Print

“Near impossibility of getting immersed in hypertext in same way as getting lost in a book”

(Mangen, 2009)

Page 37: Marianne Wolf

Comprehension for On-Screen vs. Print

(Ackerman & Lauterman, 2012)

Screen

Print

Page 38: Marianne Wolf

The Formation of Deep ReadingHow does deep reading come to be?

Page 39: Marianne Wolf

Cautions From the Last Transition

Socrates feared that print would give the illusion of truth and create no ambition in the young beyond the superfluity of knowledge.

Page 40: Marianne Wolf

Is superfluity (“shallow reading”) and the expectation for constant, immediate external information be the new threat for digital readers? Will these emphases short-circuit

the reading brain?

Page 41: Marianne Wolf

Will the process of internalization of knowledge require too much time and cognitive effort given immediate access to external knowledge

Will imagination in childhood be displaced by too much that is given too quickly requiring too little effort?

Will the development of imagery in the child be displaced by visual imagery that is provided externally?

Page 42: Marianne Wolf

We can not go back to a pre-digital time; but, we should not lurch forward without understanding

what we will lose, what we will gain, for our

species’ cognitive repertoire.

Page 43: Marianne Wolf

“It would be a shame if brilliant technology were to end up threatening the kind of

intellect that produced it.”- Edward Tenner

Page 44: Marianne Wolf

What can we know?

What should we do?

What may we hope?

Three Questions of Kant (Dunne, 2012)

Page 45: Marianne Wolf

3. Can knowledge about the “reading brain”, combined with multiple ways of knowing---exemplified by

Socrates/Aristotle, Proust, and Nicholas of Cusa--- propel a more hopeful approach to our transition?

Page 46: Marianne Wolf

How do we prevent “Short circuiting” of deep reading brain

while acquiring new skills necessary for the 21st

Century?

Page 47: Marianne Wolf

“A culture can be judged by how it pursues three lives:

the life of activity and productivity, the life of enjoyment, the life of

contemplation.”-Aristotle

Page 48: Marianne Wolf

Advantages of Digital Reading

Brain for the Life of Activity and

Productivity

➡ Massive information processing with more non-linear branching and iconic emphases

➡ Speed and efficiency

➡ Multi-tasking and interactive communication

➡ Democratization of knowledge

Page 49: Marianne Wolf

One of the greatest impediments to this

form of reading is the “busy mind” that

skips from one thought to the next without the capacity to enter the

hidden depths of words that require both

receptivity and the quiet focusing of

attention.-Enzo Bianchi

Page 50: Marianne Wolf

Advantages of Deep Reading Brain for the

“Life of Contemplation”The time required by deep reading

both in milliseconds during the reading act

and in years of formation changes the quality of

thought.

Page 51: Marianne Wolf

“We transgress not because we try to build the new, but because

we do not allow ourselves to consider

what it disrupts or diminishes”-Sherry Turkle, Alone

Together

Page 52: Marianne Wolf

How do we resolve a “coincidence of opposites of believable truths”?

-Nicholas of Cusa

Page 53: Marianne Wolf

“learn-ed ignorance”A kind of knowing that is aware of its own limits:

what we knowwhat we do not know

and what we need to know to understand and move forward.

Page 54: Marianne Wolf

What we know...

Page 55: Marianne Wolf

We know...

... our brain was never genetically programmed to read.

Page 56: Marianne Wolf

... each reader must build a new reading circuit.

We know...

Page 57: Marianne Wolf

... this reading circuit is plastic and influenced by the specific emphases of different writing systems and

mediums

We know...

Page 58: Marianne Wolf

... that the present reading brain is capable of both the most superficial and the deepest forms of

reading, feeling, and thought

We know...

Page 59: Marianne Wolf

What we do not know...

Page 60: Marianne Wolf

... but we can predict that information will accelerate at rates that will make completely new demands on every

person in the next generation.

Courtesy of Ray Kurzweil and Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.

We do not know...

Page 61: Marianne Wolf

We do not know...

...if immediate access to massive amounts of information will change the nature of internal processing during

reading--- its deeper comprehension and the internalization of knowledge for future thoughts and

insights beyond information given.

Page 62: Marianne Wolf

... if the immediate access to this increasing amount of external information in the young will deter from the formation of “Deep Reading” processes or the

desire to probe more deeply into its meaning or to go beyond it.

We do not know...

Page 63: Marianne Wolf

... if such changes in internalized knowledge will result in a very different set of cognitive capacities to synthesize, infer from information, and go beyond it in very different, and more innovative ways than before, more appropriate

for the digital culture.

We do not know...

Page 64: Marianne Wolf

What can we know?

What should we do?

What may we hope?

Three Questions of Kant (Dunne, 2012)

Page 65: Marianne Wolf

“I think there’s a common point between both worlds, and then there’s also a point of departure where they

each demonstrate their own sort of

possibilities.”-Mark Danielewski

Page 66: Marianne Wolf
Page 67: Marianne Wolf

QuickTime™ et undécompresseur

sont requis pour visionner cette image.

Page 68: Marianne Wolf

“Knowing what we do not Know” as the basis for our Questions

How do we add to the repertoire of the expert reading brain without diminishing its present capacities?

How can the digital medium be designed to redress its own shortcomings?

Page 69: Marianne Wolf

How can we create the conditions for new readers to develop a bi-literate brain and to know when to skim and when to dive deeply?

Page 70: Marianne Wolf

A lecture about how the brain learns to leap beyond the information given shouldn’t have a

last slide.....