A new study in the scientific journal Brain and Language examines how the brain responds when presented with two different methods of reading instruction. It examines a small sample—sixteen adults (with an average age of twenty-two) who are native English speakers and do not face reading disabilities.
Participants took two days to undergo training, whereby they learn an invented language based on hieroglyphics. Each participant was taught two ways to associate a set of words read aloud to a corresponding set of visual characters (or “glyphs”). The first was a phonics-based approach focusing on letter-sound relationships; the second was a whole-word approach relying on memorization. After training, the participants took part in testing sessions during which they were hooked up to an EEG machine that monitored their brain response. They were then instructed to approach their “reading” using one strategy or the other.
Scientists found that the phonics approach activated the left side of the brain—which is where the visual and language regions lie, and which has been shown in prior studies to support later word recognition. Thus, activating this part of the brain helps to spur on beginning readers. This approach also enabled participants to decode “words” they had previously not been exposed to in the training. The whole-word approach, on the other hand, did not activate the left brain hemisphere; instead, it engaged the right side, which has different circuitry typically not associated with “firing” in the brains of skilled early readers.
The study adds more solid evidence that phonics instruction is effective instructional practice, which is what the National Reading Panel told us many years ago. Now we know that it also stimulates the brain.
SOURCE: Yuliya N. Yonchevaa, Jessica Wiseb, Bruce McCandlissc, "Hemispheric specialization for visual words is shaped by attention to sublexical units during initial learning," Brain and Language, Volumes 145–146, June–July 2015.
