March 5, 2019
Reading summer camp? Study to examine how soon-to-be kindergartners are wired for literacy
A study this summer will examine how the word-recognition portion of the brain develops in preschoolers.Suzanne Ender
Picture this scene: A father reads a storybook to his young daughter, the girl seated in his lap and apparently fascinated by the illustrations of a bunny.
Picture the same scene, neuroscientist version: Brain scans show activity in the father’s primary visual cortex, extending to a specialized word recognition area, as he reads the text and glances at the drawings; in the child’s brain, only the primary visual cortex and regions involved in recognizing the illustrations are activated.
The brain is constantly taking in countless pieces of information, processing different types in distinct areas of the brain. Evidence suggests that the word-recognition section is active once children begin learning to read.
But when does that region start going to work, exactly? And what makes it spring into action?
A literacy study launching this summer with dozens of local preschoolers not only will try to answer that, but also, lead researcher Jason Yeatman hopes, continue in years to come as both a research project and a service to the community. The reading instruction study, a two-week “camp” targeting children entering kindergarten in the fall, aims to teach early literacy skills and measure brain activity before and after instruction.
“We know how literacy works in the literate brain, but what changes in the brain’s circuitry from beginning to fluent readers?” said Yeatman, an assistant professor of speech and hearing sciences who conducts research at the UW Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences.
The foundation of literacy is the alphabetic principle: letters represent sounds, which in turn come together to form words. Very young children first see a letter as, essentially, a squiggle. It’s not until they learn to associate those squiggles with the sounds of language, and combine those letters into words that have meaning, that they are reading.
The brain processes words in a small region at its base, close to a wider swath at the back of the head called the primary visual cortex, where all sight-related information is received. By ages 8 to 12 — generally considered a middle to fluent reading stage — magnetoencephalography (MEG) images of the brain indicate heightened neural activity in the word-recognition area. That same area, in a baby or preschooler brain, does not register activity in MEG images.
This illustration of the side view of the brain — the front of the brain is at left — shows how visual information is received in the back, and words are identified near the base, to be processed for understanding elsewhere.Jason Yeatman
But at some point, between ogling pictures and reading chapter books, neurons in the word-recognition area start firing. Yeatman and his team want to try to determine when, and what instructional methods might ignite activity.
The study is recruiting 40 children who will start kindergarten in the fall and, at the time of the study, have limited knowledge of the alphabet (the better to evaluate the effects of various literacy lessons). The children will spend three hours a day, every day, for two weeks in what amounts to free “reading camp”: about five children per instructor, receiving evidence-based, game-oriented lessons in identifying and writing letters, reading sight words and the like. (Washington’s kindergarten learning standards call for those skills and more.)
Yeatman will use the I-LABS MEG machine — a safe, noninvasive process — to capture images of each child’s brain at the beginning and end of the camp, and in a follow-up session the next summer. As children encounter literacy lessons in kindergarten, some may be reading by the end of the year, while others may be struggling with combining letters into sounds. The reading camp study may be able to help shed light on those early differences, Yeatman said.
In 2018, Yeatman published a study that focused on the brain circuitry of school-age children with dyslexia, and the neural development that occurred when children underwent an intensive reading intervention.
Jason Yeatman, an assistant professor in the UW Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences, shows an illustration of the brain in his office at I-LABS.Mark Stone/U. of Washington
The dyslexia study and, perhaps even more so, the reading camp study, function on two levels, Yeatman said. There’s the fundamental scientific purpose, which is to study how the brain develops the ability to read. But there’s also the potential for community impact, as children receive free instruction in essential skills. Yeatman hopes to expand reading camp to reach greater numbers of children, especially those who might not have access to preschool, in future summers.
“After every summer of doing this, there will be more research questions to ask. Why are some children struggling at the end of kindergarten? What’s changing in brain’s reading circuitry? What’s the impact of one component of reading instruction? How can we personalize instruction to a child’s unique patter of brain development” Yeatman said. “This is also a way to tie research to services that are helpful for the community, which is a good thing.”
The reading camp study is funded by the National Institutes of Health.
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For more information on the study, contact the Brain Development and Education Lab at bdelab@u.washington.edu or 206-685-9365.
Tag(s): College of Arts & Sciences • Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences • I-LABS • Jason Yeatman
