Course Detail
The structure of talk will be to present research that spans three decades in three major areas: 1) An understanding of the reading brain circuit and the multiple component processes that are necessary for its basic acquisition in children and its fruition in what the speaker has called deep reading processes; 2) a conceptualisation of dyslexia which emphasises multiple sources of possible impediments---with radical implications for early prediction, more refined assessment, and targeted interventions for different learners; and 3) an examination of the positive and negative effects of digital culture for deep reading in individuals and for global literacy in a connected world.
Because Maryanne Wolf's recent work on deep reading processes represents an area less known by researchers in dyslexia, she will provide a more elaborated description of how the expert reading brain activates some of the most sophisticated cognitive, linguistic, and affective processes we possess.
The speaker will highlight some of her originating research with neurologist Martha Bridge Denckla, with whom she published the RAN/RAS naming speed tests, one of the two best predictors of dyslexia in every language tested. She will discuss how the use of RAN has expanded our understanding of the heterogeneity within dyslexia, which led to some of our most recent, and most important RAN-based research. With MIT neuroscientists John Gabrieli and her former PhD student Ola Ozernov-Palchik, she conducted the largest pre-reading, prediction study of Kindergarten children and demonstrated the capacity to predict dyslexia subtypes before children ever develop the destructive emotional sequelae of reading failure. What is critical about these results is that they provide the basis for early targeted intervention for various subtypes of children.