The SRCD Biennial Meeting 2017

 

The following talk and panel discussion were among the most informative and insightful sessions I attended.

 

 

One of the most thought-provoking talks I attended was on how the brain enables reading. The speaker was Maryanne Wolf, psychologist and leading expert on reading and dyslexia. “Reading is a cultural invention, and we were never born to read,” said Wolf. She likened the mechanism for reading to a circuit formed in the brain by connecting existing parts that were originally designed for different purposes such as vision, language and cognition. The remarkable thing, she said, is the brain’s plasticity, which enables it to adapt to accomplish the purpose of reading. Wolf cited French cognitive neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene’s research, showing that the brain is able to recycle and repurpose groups of neurons to form a connected circuit while reading. “Reading can be learned only because of the brain’s plastic design, and when reading takes place, that individual brain is forever changed, both physiologically and intellectually,” Wolf stated in her book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.  

 

What are the parts of the reading circuit? It begins with oral language development, as children develop essential understanding of sound patterns and structures of words (phonological awareness). Phonemic awareness refers to the understanding of the smallest units of sound. For example, the word “hat” consists of three distinct sounds (phonemes): /h/æ/t/. Having an understanding of representation of letters, letter patterns and conventions of print (e.g., left to right scanning for European writing systems) is also important (orthographic development). Learning meanings of words (semantic development) and how to combine words to form sentences (syntactic development) are other parts.  

 

What can parents do to bolster children’s language development before they start learning to read? Wolf highlighted the importance of speaking and reading to children from early on (for example, reading Mother Goose rhymes to children gives them excellent representations of language sounds). Research by John Hutton and his colleagues published in 2015 showed that children with greater reading exposure between parent and child in the home environment show robust activation in the area of the brain that supports skills in semantic processing. 

 

Wolf also encouraged an interactive reading method called “dialogic reading,” which involves children in the process. (This technique works best one-on-one or with a small group of children.) For example, when reading familiar books, leave a blank at the end of repeated phrases so children can complete them. Other strategies include asking questions using “what,” “when,” “where” and “how” to invite children to participate in the storytelling process as well as to expand their vocabulary. 

 

Wolf’s talk affirms Bing’s holistic approach to children’s emerging literacy. To facilitate children’s development, teachers create a print-rich environment with lots of books and engage with them in a variety of activities such as reading to them, sharing conversations, singing songs and playing rhyming games. 

 

Wolf also talked about cerebrodiversity, referring to the wide range of neurological wiring found in different individuals. One variant that results in difficulty reading is dyslexia. But dyslexia, Wolf stressed, should not be looked at as a deficit, noting that individuals with a history of dyslexia tend to be able to see visual patterns—big picture, both literally and figuratively—and have superior visual spatial ability to problem-solve. They tend to become artists, architects, scientists and entrepreneurs—in fact, people who think outside the box. 

 

 

Another topic of interest is the early gender gap in the subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, known as “STEM.” Allison Master, a Stanford alumna who conducted studies at Bing while pursuing her doctorate, hosted a roundtable discussion on this subject. 

 

During the discussion, panelist Susan Levine of the University of Chicago highlighted the importance of fostering spatial thinking in girls because it might encourage learning in STEM domains. Levine’s research has found that parents of boys used more spatial language than parents of girls when they engaged in puzzles. In one of her studies, researchers informed parents that spatial skills facilitate learning in subjects such as chemistry and physics later in school, and that they can foster their children’s skills by engaging in activities such as building with blocks, playing with puzzles and intentionally using spatial language. They explained to parents that spatial thinking is thinking about objects (e.g., properties such as shape and size) and how things move in space. The researchers also scripted the language in storybooks, thus providing parents with a model. Another panelist, David Uttal of Northwestern University, stated that arts education—visual arts, for example—enhances girls’ spatial thinking, and that separation of art and science is problematic. 

 

Valuing raw talent may account for differences in female representation in certain fields in higher education. Psychologist Andrei Cimpian of NYU, who spent several years at Bing as a graduate student, co-conducted a nationwide survey of academics in 30 fields and asked the practitioners what determines top performers in their field—essentially what it takes to succeed. Some fields (e.g., mathematics, physics, philosophy) view brilliance as a major factor in success, which reflects a fixed mindset of believing in innate talent. Those fields also have lower female representation, possibly because women are negatively stereotyped in terms of brilliance compared to males.

 

Do children associate brilliance with boys? Cimpian and psychologist Lin Bian—a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford who started conducting research at Bing this summer—found that starting at age 6, girls tend to be less likely than boys to view children and adults of the same gender as “really, really smart.” They also tend to be less likely to choose games that are for smart children. Acquiring such stereotypes about talent may negatively affect children’s future aspirations. Cimpian noted that there is evidence that gender gaps in math are greater in societies that have stronger stereotypes and are more gender-unequal. 

 

Cimpian cited Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck’s theory on growth vs. fixed mindset as an antidote to counter these negative stereotypes—by fostering a mindset that abilities can be acquired through effort and hard work. Individuals who view talent as innate tend to have a fixed view on abilities and may react negatively to failure, rather than as an opportunity to learn. He suggested that parents could inhabit the growth mindset themselves and guide children when they encounter difficulties.