The Medical Daily – Ed Cara
“The study trained adults to read words via a new writing system, either through memorizing entire words or by learning how to link letters to the sounds of words. It then found that the neural activity during a later reading test was significantly impacted by learning instructions. Specifically, the left hemisphere of the brains lit up more for words introduced within a “letter-sound,” or phonic, instruction approach to beginning reading. Similar effects occurred for both words that were already taught under this approach, and also for new words they had never seen before, as long as they contained the same letter-sound information. According to the study authors, this left-brain processing is more often seen among skilled readers. And they feel that their results may provide insights about how a teacher’s approach, like the decision to employ phonics-based activities, may impact changes in the brains of beginning readers. Recruiting 16 students, the authors spent two days to train them how to read words printed in a newly made-up alphabet. Comprised of simple half-loops and slashes, the new word symbols were taught by presenting each along with a spoken English word. The researchers wanted to know how just changing one thing — the way the instructor introduced the learning task — might impact not just how well words were learned, but what brain circuits were activated with different approaches to learning. So, for half the words, the instructor introduced the task as one that needed the students to focus their mind on small letter- like parts within each new word symbol and link them in their mind’s ear with the elementary speech sounds — also known as phonemes — in each corresponding spoken English word. For the other half of the symbols, students were simply asked to associate each whole word symbol with the corresponding spoken English word.”(more)