Reading, Creativity and the Brain

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Reading, Creativity and the Brain

• Georgene Troseth, Ph.D.
• Caresa Young, Ed.S.
• Vanderbilt University

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The love of reading
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What do cognitive scientists know about reading?

• Its one of our most complex (and most recent)
  behaviors
• It calls on many parts of the brain
• Vision
• Sound/auditory cortex
• Memory
• Problems with any of the subsystems can lead to
  reading difficulties
• Practice (making components automatic) leads to
  better reading

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Reading

• What do we do when we read?
• Take in visual information (print)
• Transfer those squiggles into sounds
  and then words
• (DECODING and WORD RECOGNITION)
• Construct meaning from what is read
• (READING COMPREHENSION)

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Good Readers

• Attend to the task
• Read fluently and automatically
• Monitor their own reading
• Use skills to decode unknown words
• ENJOY READING

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Reading and the Brain

• Much research has been conducted in the past 20
  years to determine what the brain must do to read
• I will present a simplistic model of the reading
  brain

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The Reading Brain

• STEP ONE Visual information (words letters)
  is processed mainly by the right hemisphere
• STEP TWO The visual information must be
  transferred to the left hemisphere through the
  corpus collosum
• STEP 3 The visual information must be
  transformed into language. This is the job of the
  angular gyrus.

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Corpus Collosum
Angular gyrus
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The Reading Brain

• STEP 4 Brocas area (a language area) is
  activated for motor speech and phonological
  recoding (sounding out words)
• STEP 5 Wernickes area (another language area)
  is activated to construct meaning from the text

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Atypical Readers

• But sometimes, something goes wrong
• 20 of children have difficulty learning to read.
  
• 5-7 of the school population has a diagnosed
  reading disability
• Most students with learning disabilities in
  special education have reading deficits
• Most poor readers have phonological processing
  difficulties.

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Atypical Readers

• Differences in brain structure
• Differences in brain function

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Brain Structurein Atypical Reader s

• Left Planum Temporale is the same size as
  right Planum Temporale (left is bigger in
  typical readers)
• This area is central to language processing
• Could indicate less neurons available for
  language processing and reading ability (reading
  is a linguistic process)

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Planum temporale in normal and atypical reader
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Brain Structurein Atypical Reader s

• Deficient magnocellular system
• The magnocellular system is responsible for
• Visualprocessing high contrast information
  (black/white print)
• Auditoryprocessing rapid auditory information
• It is likely that only a small percentage of poor
  readers have this deficit
• Link to Colored Overlays intervention
• Link to Fast Forward intervention

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Brain Structurein Atypical Reader s

• Increased white matter in left hemisphere
  (inactive neurons)
• Underdevelopment of the corpus collosum
• Underdevelopment of the angular gyrus
• Underdevelopment of Brocas area

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Brain Function in Atypical Readers

• Greater slow wave activity in the left hemisphere
  (decreased activity in the language areas of the
  brain)
• Cerebral blood flow lower in the auditory area
  (indicates decreased activity in this area)
• Several areas of the brain may be impaired. The
  more areas that are affected, the more severe the
  impairment.

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But theres hopeResearch-based Interventions

• Interventions that are effective include
• Explicit instruction of all aspects of reading
• Direct systematic teaching of all aspects of the
  sounds of English
• Ample repetition and practice to assure learning
  to mastery

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THE GOOD NEWS

• Research-based instruction has been shown to
  alter brain functioning in children with reading
  disabilities!!!
• Georgetown University
• University of Washington
• Effective instruction in K-1 leads to
  significantly fewer problems in 3rd grade and
  thereafter.

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Vanderbilt Kennedy Center Reading Clinic

• Provides intensive, individualized, 1-to-1
  tutoring.
• Uses research-based methods

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Contacting the Clinic

• caresa.young_at_vanderbilt.edu
• 615-936-5123

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Reading and creativity

• Reading has been a pivotal skill for the human
  species
• Allows us to pass on accumulated knowledge, to
  pool our learning and experience
• How is reading related to creativity?

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What is creativity?

• Creation of innovative ideas and products
• Choosing which of these are worth pursuing

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Characteristics of creative individuals

• Thinking
• Depth of knowledge in area of interest
• Knack of finding interesting problems to explore
• Divergent thinking (variety novelty of ideas)
• Transformation ability to reorganize known
  information into new patterns
• Synthesis ability to see unusual connections

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Characteristics of creative individuals

• Personality
• Tolerance of ambiguity
• Openness to experience
• Independence of judgment
• Curiosity
• Gets enjoyment out of challenges and problem
  solving
• Emotional relation to his/her work

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Creativity requires mastery

• Accumulation of expert knowledge, which often
  depends on extensive reading
• Creative individuals frequently have several
  areas of deep interest
• They then begin to see novel connections between
  these areas, leading to innovation

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• The anthropologist Margaret Mead recalls as a
  child
• reading, reading as many hours a day as I could
  manage between playing outdoors and doing formal
  lessons. Of course, reading was a good thing,
  but too much reading was believed to be bad for a
  child. And so it became, in part, a secret
  pleasure I indulged in at night when I was
  supposed to be asleep or in the daytime hours I
  spent curled up in a hollow at the roots of a
  tree when I was supposed to be off on some more
  active quest.
• -- Blackberry Winter

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Can creativity be taught?

• Promote the patterns of thinking and values that
  underlie creativity
• One program uses characters in picture books to
  model creative behavior
• Affirm or encourage traits such as divergent
  thinking, curiosity, enjoyment of problem solving

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Flexible thinking
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Tolerance of ambiguity
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Examples of Innovators
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Reading, creativity, and the brain

• Areas of the brain involved in reading have been
  identified
• Research-based reading interventions help to
  change atypical brain function
• We dont know where creativity occurs in the
  brain

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Reading, creativity, and the brain

• Creative people often are avid readers in their
  area of interest
• Mastery of an area is required for innovation
• Knowledge of several areas promotes the formation
  of novel connections
• It may be possible to teach aspects of creative
  thought and values underlying creativity