Literacy Talks

Exploring Stanislas Dehaene's Groundbreaking Research on Reading Acquisition

• Reading Horizons • Season 6 • Episode 12

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The trio dives into the insights and research of renowned neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene on the cognitive science of reading. Dehaene's work has revolutionized our understanding of how the brain learns to read, from the development of the visual word form area to the neural markers of dyslexia. 

The hosts unpack Dehaene's explanations of the brain's recycling of pre-existing circuits for reading, the competition and collaboration between reading and facial recognition, and the different subtypes of reading challenges. Throughout the discussion, they highlight Dehaene's practical teaching recommendations grounded in the latest neuroscience, providing educators with a roadmap to foster reading proficiency in all learners.

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  • The Matthew Effect: The Matthew effect of accumulated advantage, sometimes called the Matthew principle, is the tendency of individuals to accrue social or economic success in proportion to their initial level of popularity, friends, and wealth. It is sometimes summarized by the adage or platitude "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer".


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Narrator:

Welcome to Literacy Talks, the podcast for literacy leaders and champions everywhere, brought to you by Reading Horizons. Literacy Talks is the place to discover new ideas, trends, insights and practical strategies for helping all learners reach reading proficiency. Our hosts are Stacey Hurst, a professor at Southern Utah University and Chief Academic Advisor for Reading Horizons. Donell Pons, a recognized expert and advocate in literacy, dyslexia and special education, and Lindsay Kemeny, an elementary classroom teacher, author and speaker. Now let's talk literacy.

Stacy Hurst:

Okay. Welcome to this episode of literacy talks. I'm Stacy Hurst, and I'm joined by Lindsay Kemeny and Donell Pons, and every week we discuss something, some aspect of the science of reading. And this week, Donnell chose our topic. But I'm going to preface it by saying I won't tell you the person that we're going to be talking about and their work, but I will tell you that this is donnell's brain crush. So you might, I don't know how you might notice some twitterpation going on as we talk about certain things.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Is it really just a brain crush, though, that's what I love.

Stacy Hurst:

You know, I have to say, after watching the videos, that's a good point, Lindsay, because after watching the videos, I watched too, there was a moment that I was like a little something, something that maybe yeah, so it could be more complete and and just to clarify, Donell did let us know her husband is aware of this, so we're not announcing anything new, and Lindsey and I are not even going to mention if we have crushes or not. This is all about Donell and her crush. So Donell, without any further ado, let's turn over to you to tell us who and what we will be talking about. Who are you crushing that

Donell Pons:

nice, Okay, without further objectifying this man of science, we're talking about Stanislas Dehaene, de Juan. However you want to say his name. And this is an April 2024, San Diego reading league conference video that is available online. So if you YouTube that, you should be able to see a free version. And I think he's always great. Stacy's already said we don't need to go back over it, but I do. I think he's always great. And this should be a really fun conversation, and we're going to start with some of the aspects of what he discussed in the video, and kind of orient us. And he was talking about something I think is really interesting to folks today too, learning to read in more than one language, what happens to the brain and how we can facilitate it. So that was also part of the conversation, which was really interesting. He jumped right in at the beginning, which I think was great, with a slide and a statement, obviously a very familiar slide of the brain. Things that we've seen before, if you are involved in the science of reading, as Stacy said, and it says, before the child learns to read, the major systems for vision and speech recognition are already in place, an interface must be created between vision and language. And I thought that was really interesting. You just started us there and oriented us. And, of course, again, a very familiar picture of the brain where he shows the visual word form area, which is something Stanislaus has talked about quite a bit and is known for in the visual cortex, connecting to phonology in that phonological region. You guys both, obviously, you know, we watched this and we did it for the podcast. What did you think when you first saw the video, because I had brought it up and said, I thought this was really great, and then you guys dutifully watched, and, you know, did your part with it too. What did you think when he first brought up this first slide, and this was going to be his subject matter?

Stacy Hurst:

I know I was thinking, because I was actually supposed to attend that summit, and then it turned out that I couldn't. But I remember when I heard that he was the keynote. I had a couple different steps, so I had the same thought when I saw the slide like Stanislaus Dane isn't really known for ml instruction, which was the point of the summit, right? But then I also remembered at the beginning of his book, how we how we learn, which is one of my favorite books, he actually states something like, if we don't understand how the brain learns how to read, how are we going to teach it effectively? So he goes, Well, I won't do any spoiler alerts, but that helped me realize he does go on to say that they're the brain structure is the same in any language we're working with the same computer. So then it made sense to me, but those are my initial thoughts. I

Lindsay Kemeny:

just want to know if we're going to talk about his accent. Because, you know, can't you just listen to him? Talk all day, I mean. And yeah, I liked at the beginning, and he was talking about looking, I don't know is this jumping ahead the two month old brain with the language acquisition right was towards the beginning how certain areas were activated when those two month olds heard sentences, and he was talking about the spoken language has a very specific area of the brain, and then when we read, we reuse those same areas, that same circuit that we use for speech. And he said, we just change the input. And it's that. That's when he was talking about that visual word form area where he calls it the letter box.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I know. I don't think that's jumping ahead at all, because that first slide where I said, before the child learns to read, the major systems for vision and speech recognition are already in place, and an interface must be created. And the head of that one is called education. It's the recycling pre existing brain circuits. So, yeah, I mean, right off the bat, you know that. And Stacey, I like the fact that you pointed out, who better to talk about multi language learning than Stanislas, right? Because, as he says, we're using that same system, right in acquiring different language. And I really thought, wow, how come we haven't approached it this way before? Because what genius to approach it this way, rather than making things seem so very, very different, and you need a whole other understanding. No, it's take your base of understanding, and then if you understand language and how it's acquisition, then a lot of the myths and various things also get dispelled, right? If you understand that, okay, very good. I thought it was interesting that he said the main brain changes induced by reading acquisition. And of course, this is going to be very interesting for those of us who have folks in our own households who struggle with reading, if we taught folks who struggle with reading, because this becomes immediately the area of concern, right? Everything's great and fantastic if there isn't any challenge between making that interface, as he said, right? So now we're taking existing circuits. We're making an interface. If there are no challenges to that interface, maybe you're not deep into this conversation because you just didn't need to. But that's where you really start to pull it apart and say, Wow, if there's a challenge in making the interface, what do I do about it? How do you recognize it? What do I do about it? Right? Those are the two things I thought that was really interesting. I also thought, let's have a little chit chat about this. Faces and words. There's collaboration in interpreting both So as he's talking about that visual word form area and the various circuits that are going to be used, he says, brain scans indicate the more you can read, the more activation you get in the visual word form area. That's the area of the brain that recognize recognizes those letters. Reading begets better. Reading. The emergence of the visual word form area depends on the experience with reading, and not age. It's completely different for faces. Faces depend on age. He started that right off. What do you guys think about that?

Stacy Hurst:

You know, I was thinking about that because he also goes on to so expertly and simply explain what is happening in the brain. So you use the word collaboration. There's a collaboration in that space, but he also said there's a competition in that space. So, and I don't remember which I also watched, if you haven't seen planet, word that he was he did the same presentation. Actually, Emily Hanford was there. So they had a Q A at the end. But I can't remember which one he specified in when they were talking about that part of the brain when you so as you become a reader, and that part of your brain gets activated, whether you're competing or collaborating with the facial recognition part, you actually get better at recognizing faces. So somebody asked him a question in the audience, well, then can we just train students to better recognize faces to improve their reading. And he What did he say? Very kindly. Said, No, that we because we still need explicit instruction. And he was saying, there still will be a reciprocal effect. But what happens, as you were mentioning Donnell in the brain, is that that space, there's some competition for space there. So the more the better reader you are, the more cells are occupied with the ability to recognize letters and face. That facial recognition gets better at the same time. But if you didn't learn how to read, you actually don't have that space. It's more the facial recognition cells or components. I'm not using the right words, yeah, so I thought it was interesting that he said competition and collaboration for that space.

Donell Pons:

How about you? Lindsay,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I don't know. I think about a lot of things, but I kind of wonder why, why does face recognition have to do with age, but not. Reading. He's saying that just forms the more with practice. And I'm just trying to understand, I guess, what that means, application wise. And sometimes you have people talking about, like, how early, how like, how early Can you teach someone to read? Or if it's not developmentally appropriate.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I thought this was interesting, too. My mind went to the same place as yours. Went to Lindsay as well. And one of the interesting things, he kind of pulls that apart a little bit. But of course, he only has so much time. And I'm sure if we had been able to Q and A him right there, would probably have spent a good deal of time talking about this. And I'm sure he had more to say. To be precise, one of the things he did make a little clear, or clearer at the time is that he was saying about the reading portion that that's not relying on age, because oftentimes we'll say, well, now the student is 11, so I guess that time has passed, using those excuses anyway, on either end of the spectrum. Then also talking about the visual recognition. There's a piece to faces for us as our understanding of what we're seeing in a face, and recognition as well that he said comes with the development of maturity in understanding what you're saying. So that he was making some sort of explanation too, of those of what he's saying there, but I think more what he was saying on in the terms of the reading piece that I found very interesting. It's the Matthew effect, yes, but it's also the scientific understanding of the Matthew effect to me when he was saying that that reading begets better reading, and that brain scans indicate the more you can read, the more activation you get in the visual word form area. So he's actually talking about the very precise places in which you are getting a boost from your ability to do the thing, which I thought was really interesting. So getting very specific, you're

Stacy Hurst:

right. And he also referred to, he actually referred to teaching decoding as the silver bullet, which we don't often hear because it's very complex as far as teaching goes. But he even, he even stated in one of these that I watched that teaching reading is actually simple. Reading acquisition is simple, of course, easy for him to say, but because he knows so much about it. But I think Lindsay, to your question about facial recognition, takes time, and it's not specific matters the age, right? But reading doesn't. I think it's because of that you can inform reading rather quick, relatively quickly. But our facial recognition develops over time. We get better at it with more exposure to faces and different features that we're focusing on. And maybe, you know, there are a million different faces, but only 26 letters of the alphabet, so maybe that has something to do with it, too, right?

Donell Pons:

The complexity of emotion too, right? As well. Yeah, all of that. One thing, I think is interesting, he was quick to point out as well that even though he's been and he says a lot about the fact of how quickly you even mentioned it Lindsay, that we have this recognition of the language. And He even talks about in utero, some of the studies that was interesting about being able to recognize vowel tones of a certain language, that sort of thing. He's quick to point out, he's in no way implying that you have full understanding. But rather, there's a system of recognition for that sound. That's how early that is and how natural that development. That's the point he's making, not to say that because of that. So as you're pointing out, that's good to keep in mind. I thought this was interesting too. He goes on to say each word as we learn to read as we teach reading each word has a sparse neural barcode. These networks care about letters and their positions. This is going to be really interesting information later, when he gets into reading difficulties as well. But I thought that was very interesting. We've talked about some of the challenges of this word form, visual word form area, some of the things that may impact the availability and the sharing of information to the visual word form area, but he says each word has a sparse neural bar code. These networks care about letters and their positions. That's really important to hang on to. Later, about caring about letters and their positions, because that's really important, as he points out later. So what happens when a student struggles to read? The question is asked very early in his presentation, a weakness in the development of the visual word form area of the brain. You can see this in a brain scan of two nine year old students who have received three years of reading instruction. The student with dyslexia has a small development in the visual word form area, while the student without Dyslexia has a much more developed visual word form area. So the student with dyslexia has had has less development in the visual word form area and also in the area of facial recognition. I thought that was interesting. He's pointing that out as well, that there seems to be in tandem, also a smaller improvement in facial recognition. But I thought that was interesting, that he's immediately making the point that you. Can see it. So that Stanislaus beauty, right? Go on. Lindsay, what do you think we'll put

Lindsay Kemeny:

a pin in that? You know? Because, yeah, there is a neural signature for dyslexia, right? And that's what he's describing here. And so when you have these people, and you still have people that push back and say it's not a thing, you know, it's, no, look at these scans. It's right there. He has seen it. Sally Shaywitz has researched this, you know, it's, there is different activations happening in the brain,

Donell Pons:

yeah, that you can see. And in fact, he calls it a neural biomarker, right? So you can't see this neural biomarker. What do we think about what I thought was really interesting is his ability to see and put those two brain scans next to each other, because this is information that's really important. We think that our teaching is having the same impact or same effect. It's really challenging. Wouldn't it be great if we had an MRI machine to be able to see that brain? Wouldn't it? Wouldn't that be great in real time?

Stacy Hurst:

Okay, you know what's interesting about that? He mentions this in the other video I watched, because teachers ask him that all the time, can we just scan the brains of my students? But he said, you can actually learn just as much by one minute observing a child how to read that you don't need what they're doing. Yeah, you don't need to put them through an MRI machine to know where their deficit is. And I thought that was empowering, yeah,

Donell Pons:

yeah. So stay I want to linger here for a second, because you're absolutely right, and he's going to get into that even more when he talks about types of dyslexia, that's where you're really observing what a student is doing. So and for those folks who don't think there's dyslexia, they're going to have their minds blown. When he starts talking talking about types of dyslexia, he puts a big S on the end of it, because that will blow a lot of people's minds when he gets even more specific about well, let's, let's even tease that out further and talk about that. There can be different types of dyslexia, and we're doing a disservice when we aren't examining those and trying to find out more in order to help a student who has a specific need, which I think is interesting. Okay, that's very cool. Stacy, I'm glad you brought that up. We're not afraid of that that Stanislaus says, You observe the student, see what they're doing. Yeah, that's the educators. MRI, right. Okay, I quoted that's, that's me, you guys, I just made that right here. So

Stacy Hurst:

to make that succinct, a one minute observation is the educators version of an MRI

Lindsay Kemeny:

hashtag, educators. MRI, there, yeah, actually,

Stacy Hurst:

I'm going to add the word informed. So informed educators, MRI, because I watched a lot of students read for a minute or more with the three cueing system, had no idea what was going on with them, right? The more informed where I can do that, yeah.

Donell Pons:

Okay, thank you, Stacy, now we've now, we've got it right down the informed educators, MRI in watching the student do something for a minute.

Stacy Hurst:

Who wants to order bumper stickers, T shirts? Rihanna

Donell Pons:

literacy talks, hashtag. So following along with that, what happens when a student struggles to read? Stanislaus said some interesting things. One was, we don't know what is the cause and what is the consequence of dyslexia, but he was quick to point out, we do have some ideas phonemic awareness being one. So he wasn't disputing that he's leaving it open. And if you're not learning to read, is the visual word form area smaller as a consequence and not a cause? Those are some of the questions, right that we should be asking, and we think maybe the cause is in the phonological system or maybe in the visual system. For some folks who have dyslexia, we can see a biomarker. That's that part we were talking about earlier. You can actually see a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition. That's what that means for dyslexia, that we do know. But as far as getting down to that, what is the cause and the consequence, it's interesting to think about right in that state. One thing he did talk about which I thought was interesting, because, remember, this is an ML conversation. He said reduced activation of the visual word form area is a universal signature of dyslexia, even in Chinese, which I thought was interesting too, because oftentimes there's pushback saying, Oh, well, surely it's different for different languages, whatever. And no, again, he's making the case that we're using same systems, and much of this is very, very similar. And I thought that was important too. And when you are reading one language or another, very similar circuits are being used when you are struggling with reading in a language, you are struggling for very similar reasons that a student is struggling in any language. So what do you guys think of that?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, I think he also said that when you are bilingual, you actually there's more activation in that area. Initially, I. Or if you're an older learner of a new language, but if you learn that language when you're young, that that area consolidates and is not as active

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Donell Pons:

This is good information, though, you guys, because How often have I heard somebody say, well, there's no way I could possibly understand if a student speaks another language, why they're struggling or or various things. Right? Again, take us back to the understanding of the brain and how we learn to read, and

Stacy Hurst:

there is a window too, because when he did state that if you learned the second language later, there's more activation in the brain, meaning you have to work harder to translate or whatever you transpose that information. But if you learn it when you're younger, then it all to your point. Donnell, we're all using the same parts of the brain, they're just more consolidated and efficient if you learn it when you're younger. Lindsay,

Donell Pons:

any takeaways for you? There any thought, any wonderings just

Lindsay Kemeny:

really interesting. What you're talking about with the cause of you know, we don't, for sure, know the cause of dyslexia, and it's just making me think of like the chicken and the egg thing, which comes first, where that visual word form area is being under utilized, it's smaller. Is that, you know, I don't know. That's just really interesting to me. Is that the cause of dyslexia, or is that because they're struggling to learn to read? I don't know. It's just a lot of things to think about.

Stacy Hurst:

And it makes sense, you know, when you're talking Lindsay like I'm thinking, how would we know, right? But it makes sense that you need instruction to be able to identify a dyslexic. Yeah, this helps to understand why. Because initially, that part of the brain looks fairly the same on most people, right? Similar. And then for anyone

Lindsay Kemeny:

who hasn't learned to read yet, yeah,

Donell Pons:

and that's where Stanislaus leans as well. Is saying that it looks more as a consequence, because they're not learning right? So if

Stacy Hurst:

the visual Word format area is not activated, you don't you didn't learn to read, like, yeah, because

Lindsay Kemeny:

I've heard Sally, she was talk about this, and then after intervention, that area is stronger. So that would make you think that, you know that is a consequence, although I guess maybe you could still think of it as the cause, but you can help it, I don't know.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. He goes on to say the visual word form area is not the only area where you will see a student with dyslexia struggling, but it's a very compelling marker. Reading impairments have similar origins at the brain level, regardless of culture and writing system. He was quick to point that out. So just reminder, reminder again. So here's what he states, reading can fail at multiple stages, including visual ones. Impairments can be phoneme. We've talked about that phonemic awareness. I think a lot of folks are aware of that one, if they're aware of nothing else, there's that one, the phoneme grapheme conversion, and then three, a visual code for letters that he'll get into and talk a little bit about, because that might be unfamiliar territory for some folks, but if you work with people who have dyslexia, this probably isn't something unfamiliar to you. So that led him to talk about types of dyslexia, where he did the dyslexia, and he says, One, the phonemic awareness that we're aware of. Two, that connection between phoneme, grapheme, three, something he's referring to as letter position, and that may be where you have a student who may see the word form but read from and he said that using spacing to help or finger under a word when reading can be very helpful there. So spacing in between the letters in order to help the student be able to see those differences, visual differences, letter position that's calling. And another one he referred to was attentional, and he said, not to be confused with how you might typically think of attention, but rather, if you had the word form and pale next to each other, the student may read that as farm and pull. They're switching internal letters. They're pulling from a word or a proximal and using that letter in another and the other word. He said a remediation for that could be cutting a hole in cardboard and putting it over the word so there is no information coming from adjacent words for that student, what did you guys think of this when he got into this information? What were you thinking at first, Lindsay, you had a lot of thoughts.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I know this is so fascinating to me, but also confusing. So. So the first point of confusion is, you know, I've never this whole idea of subtypes of dyslexia, because, you know, I've seen people say that, or the psychologist diagnosed this certain subtype, and I've always thought that the research doesn't really support that, that that's not a thing. And so now he's saying, well, there are,

Donell Pons:

yeah, and this wasn't my first pass again. It was Stanislaus. It was a few years ago, and he was bringing, bringing in some research from a conference he had held over in France, and they were talking about subtypes of dyslexia. At that point, he mentioned, you know, 21 to 25 I believe there were types of dyslexia that were mentioned, and that blew my mind when he brought that up. And so I searched on the internet trying to find more information. I was never able to find that conference, to be able to view some of it, but I was able to find a student of the professor he refers to, that was involved with that research, and her name is in the in the on the slides that he presents this information with. So if anybody's able to have success, go for it. But so it wasn't new to me, and at that time, I found it very interesting and compelling information, particularly because I have some students that he was describing when he described that switching, particularly when he talked about the letter position, type. Oh, wow, do I have some students, and in fact, that's my son. So he and I, right before this podcast, got into a very heated conversation. He did it in a good way. It wasn't that we were arguing by any means, but it was just intense, because he had so much to say. Once I had him watch that particular portion of the presentation, that led him with a lot of questions. He had a lot to say. He felt really seen, which was a part that I thought was terribly interesting. He said, wow, could I be even feeling more seen than I have been before as someone who has dyslexia, but I think that's how I'm feeling. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. Yeah, he said it spoke even more specifically to what he experienced his reading

Lindsay Kemeny:

well, and it's almost like just a different way of talking about it, because it's, it's like, yes. So my son was diagnosed with dyslexia, and I've had students with dyslexia, and, you know, we always say it presents differently, right? So, um, Stanislaus calling out the subtypes is really just kind of talking about getting a little bit more detailed about some differences that you might see, or you might see all of those. And that's like how when I'm looking at his, you know, mixing up letter position, order, the attentional, having trouble paying attention to the one word and not getting interference from surrounding words. Plus the phonology. I say, Oh, I could, my son does all of that, right? And you've probably have students, some of you that are listening where, oh, they do all of those things, you know. But so I would think that just means they have a more severe case. I know, I already knew, you know, my son was very severe case. It's a spectrum. So I'm thinking that if they have several of these issues, subtypes, it's more severe if they only have one, maybe not.

Stacy Hurst:

One thing I appreciated about when he brought this up is that he gives a solution or a way to address it, right? He doesn't just say, Oh, these are different. There are a million different types of dyslexia. Good luck. He always emphasizes the importance of identifying the subtype, which I think as teachers that's right now mostly going to be on us, which will be probably complex, right, but doable, because Lindsay, like you're talking about with your son, you've already identified a lot of those characteristics. But then what I think is interesting too, is the solutions he gave. So Lindsay, when you're saying your son does both of those things, then he gave a very specific way to address the first one, which is to have them track left to right and trace the letters. Even he says that will be helpful to focus on position, maybe add some spaces between them. But then on the next one, it is to cut out, you know, just a space big enough for a word on a cardboard, card stock or something. But how would you address both of those at the same time? Because can you like you'd spread out the letters, put them in a cardboard thing, have them go left or right. I guess

Lindsay Kemeny:

you're doing that like cardboard cutout kind of thing. Or I haven't done it with just one word, but kind of with, like the index card, where you cut a little part of it, and so you're covering part of the words that they've already read. So you could do that, plus you're having them track right with their finger and encouraging left to right. So you're already combining them. I like to track. I like to track too, and have them track as well. So what would be tricky is that I only I have two hands. I mean, I could use both, I guess, one moving cardboard than the other. The letter above, which might be a little tricky, but I like that too, that he pointed out what to do. And really, if you're a teacher listening to this, it's not your job to diagnose the subtypes. It's very interesting to say, Oh yeah, I've seen that before, where they took a letter from the next word and put it into that current word. And I was like, what is happening? Well, now you know that that is something that can happen with students with dyslexia, and it's just all those other words are like interference that, and they're having a hard time focusing on the word that they need to read. So now you know, okay, and here's a suggestion for I how I can help with that. So I do love that he got practical there.

Stacy Hurst:

And he even said he pointed out that the student maintained the same structure spelling wise of the word, he just put a different vowel in the place of the other. So that was interesting too. Probably a less important note, it's harder to analyze on that level,

Donell Pons:

what I like about having a specific name like my son said, I feel seen a lot of my students really like to know. So some students don't. They just you know, the fact that I know and I know what to do to help and support is enough. But some students really do like to know. And so I found that I like that, I appreciated that. I hope there's more to come. He did say there will be, and I appreciate that. Like I said, I've had to search around to try to find the information he has available to him. But I love hearing that somebody is doing more about this, because, as Stanislaus says, the more we know, the more precision with which we know these things, then the more precision we can have as educators, as teachers, right? That's the most important part, as you said, Lindsay, as long as I know what to do, right?

Stacy Hurst:

Maybe the same feeling at the other on the planet. Word presentation, somebody asked him, essentially the question we've heard before, are there, Advan, Are there advantages to being dyslexic? Is it a superpower? And you know, he answered that. He said, No, I don't think there's stable literature to state that Dyslexics have advantages. And then he said this, which reminded me when your son was saying he felt seen. Because I thought, man, if we could approach it, what he's about to say like this, I think every student with dyslexia will feel better. But he said, it doesn't look like they have very strong advantages. Maybe they recognize the value of effort and this will have consequences in other areas of their life. And he mentioned some famous people who have said that Winston Churchill is one. He called out, and then he said, they're just students who need very specific help in one area of their life. And I thought, oh my gosh, yeah, if we all felt empowered to address it that way. He also pointed out, when he was talking about those visual forms of dyslexia, though, at some point we all do those things because, because our brains have to, like, can connect those circuits, right? So it's not abnormal. It just needs to be addressed. So

Lindsay Kemeny:

one thing, thing that could be confusing is that, you know, one of the biggest myths about dyslexia that we always talk about is how everyone thinks it's a vision issue and that they see backwards, right? And so then it's confusing when he sent using the word visual dyslexia, right? So how do you explain that?

Donell Pons:

Yeah, I know. I And also he even said, when he used attentional for one, he goes, Oh, boy, this is kind of I this is not a great word. He even said that himself. I don't really like this word because it's going to be misunderstood. Yeah, I like the way Stanislaus sets us up to understand the environment of reading when he's talking about visual so he does a really good job of that to say it's not typical discussion of vision that we might think it's the environment. So what's the whole environment of reading? There's obviously a piece of paper with print on it, characters. I'm having to use a part of my anatomy in which to see that with. So how accurate Am I with that? He goes into great detail about this. These sort of things to kind of take us to another level of understanding, rather than maybe the first thing we might think of when we hear the word right, the association we might make. But Lindsay, you make a very good point, because, boy, has there been a lot of heated debate and discussion about some of these aspects, because we've had in the past, and you and I brought it up the colored overlay, right? Boy and boy did we there was there a lot of challenge and trouble with that. And so we don't, lest we fall back into that trap. We don't want to do that, but let's elevate the conversation. What I'm hoping is is because we have such great information is coming from such terrific sources, they're giving really good background about what it is and what they're talking about, that we won't fall back into that trap. I'm hoping we can have a higher level conversation. And,

Stacy Hurst:

you know, in the planet word, somebody asked that same. Question Lindsay, they said, What about vision therapy? And this is where I want to quote directly from Stanislaus de hain. I actually typed his words out because he made it clear to me too in this response. So even before she got to the end of her question, he actually said, ouch. And then he said, the more I am surprised by the diversity of just bullshit, crazy ideas of way to ways to address this. And then he gives the example. He says, in France, there's a company that sells glasses for dyslexic which blink very fast. And to them, that's the cure, because they think that dyslexia is in the retina. And he says, we have all the evidence in the world, it's not in the retina, it's not in the eye muscles. It is in the brain. There are different subtypes, because it can be different parts of the brain. It is a learning issue. And then he goes on to say, I will not say there is nothing in the eye movement. This is actually a research question for me for facility, yeah, yeah. Anyway, he says there is an eye movement component to reading. If you are not precise from moving from word to word, that's going to cause problems for you. Yeah, and he's talked about that,

Lindsay Kemeny:

and that's what so I was going to say, because how I think about this, and I was just going to say, correct me if I'm wrong with this whole vision thing, because I think still what he's calling it visual dyslexia, where they mix up letter position order. It's still that's not like a vision thing. It's what's the processing that happens in the brain. You hear people dyslexia describe like the letters floating or flying on the page, but they don't actually see that, I think, like the attentional dyslexia. When he was talking about that, I'm like, Ah, because they're having a hard time keying in and focusing on that one word, right? It was not like your letter vision, it's it's how it's being processed. So just putting a cover overlay on top is not going to change what's happening in the brain when they're looking at those Right, right? So I had just a funny experience with a lady who had my son read a passage, and she was like, we're gonna find his color and and then she, you know, tried a different color overlay on top, and, like, and so he read the same thing again. And she was like, yep, blue is his color. And she probably listened to him for 30 seconds. And first of all, I didn't, I didn't hear a difference in that short of time. And if she had, I was like, well, he's rereading. It's a second time with the passage. So if you heard a difference, it's because he read it again. And so I just thought it was kind of funny. There's not research to support that, cover overlays or the vision therapy to help with this,

Donell Pons:

you know. And I have to take a beat here, and if there's anyone listening who has tried any of these, and bless Dennis, lost his heart for saying what he does, because I'm sure it's very maddening to him, without the science that he has available to him to see things like this. But I have to take a beat and say, when you have a child who is struggling to learn to read, and you don't have the resources, and maybe this is your first time even hearing what it could possibly be, you will do anything, and you are really vulnerable to the suggestion from anyone who says, hey, look, I think I have the thing. They don't say I think they say, I have the thing, and you are willing to try just about anything, because I I remember those days, and they're dark days as a parent. What we're hoping to do is with this science available, having and the internet is fantastic, because I didn't have that available to me when I first was trying to help my son, so I was on my own, literally, and it was very difficult. So I do want to recognize that there are a lot of folks out there, so not to be offensive at all to someone who maybe has tried some of these and and because you're you're desperate, you're trying whatever you can. And I want to appreciate that. Yeah,

Lindsay Kemeny:

I have fallen for the snake oil before and spent 1000s of dollars before I knew better, you know. So that it's frustrating to me when you still see people pushing those things, yeah, as like a cure all, you know.

Donell Pons:

I thought it was interesting, just in the quick conversation my son and I had as we were recognizing some of these aspects, and he was feeling very seen as he said, it was interesting, because when he was talking about that visual piece that we were because that, as I said, described him quite well, the visual code for letters, my son also said, Boy, that seems really related to that phoneme grapheme conversion. To me, he didn't fall into vision at all when he saw that, he said, Boy, that seems like that's really related to my phone and graphene conversion. Just a thought. It's kind of interesting. So again, when you have the science available, you are making some really interesting observations, putting things together, and

Stacy Hurst:

your son has the ability to be meta, aware. I feel like if there are any researchers listening to this, you should connect with Donnell and her son, because he he has a way of describing what's happening, what he feels is happening. When he's reading, yeah,

Donell Pons:

I always say to him, he has been the best to have in my household, because I said, you, you don't mind examining a lot of these things. Oftentimes, with my students, they're just so done that it's enough just to have some intervention do their thing. They don't really want to discuss the nitty gritty of it. But I love having these conversations, because I love that insight, right? You love getting that insight, but you can't really get it from someone when they're just like, hey, look, I just don't really want to talk about this much more than I have to. So it is, I really appreciate that you're right. Stacy, it's fun.

Lindsay Kemeny:

I really was, I wish that he could have spoke a little more about, like, the end, where he started to get into some of those materials that they're using in France, and they're the different programs and the decodables. I just thought that was really interesting, but we didn't have a lot of time for and he just said a couple things that are great, like things that we all talk about, like, we can't skip that decoding stage. The students have to go through that struggle. Reading is not guessing. That is completely absurd. He said that I kind of loved that education must be based on scientific principles. So I really enjoyed just at the end, some of those quick little reminders and kind of those affirmations. You know, yeah,

Donell Pons:

he was really good to Yeah. And he said, on the basis of our growing understanding of the cognitive neuroscience of reading, we can outline the major pedagogical principles for reading acquisition. So these are really good and we ought to have them, as you say. Lindsay, one, explicit teaching of graphene to phoneme conversion rules, phonics patterns. He has that in parentheses. Two, with a systematic progression based on the statistics of the language. In other words, start with frequent, regular graphing, phoneme mappings. That's that scope and sequence three, careful guidance of visual attention left to right, systematic time in the spoken word can be converted into space in the written word. This is not trivial for children, and they need to be guided. So that's the transfer, the doing, and the whole environment of how you do the do, right? Four, active learning, associating reading and writing. Five, need to automatize the word recognition, process, retrieval, practice, transfer, meaningful practice. Those were great, weren't they?

Stacy Hurst:

Yeah, what I thought was really interesting about that. When he was talking about a couple of things, careful guidance for visual attention, and he did state, this is not trivial, explicitly teaching. And I immediately thought of print concepts. Even when he's talking about time to space, it's a lot faster to say a sentence than it is initially to read or write one, and we need to help that conversion, you know, be a little bit more automatic to his point. But he didn't call them print concepts. But I remember having to explicitly teach my first graders what a space is between a word, because you can't hear those when you talk, right? You can't hear the spaces. But also what I thought was interesting throughout. So that's one call out like he didn't use the term print concepts. But one other thing, when he was especially describing those visual aspects of the brain and how those phoneme grapheme correlations develop, he was essentially explaining phases of Aries word recognition theory, but he didn't call it out either. So I'm like, do you? Does? He is, I'm sure he's familiar, but he wasn't making those connections, right? But I also loved when he talked about this simple view of reading like, this is all converging science, right? I'm not hearing something and thinking, Wait a minute, that's contrary to this, or it's just all converging together. So back to his point, what we do in the classroom has to be based on scientific principles.

Donell Pons:

Yeah, another word, alignment, right? That one came to mind as well. There's alignment. Lindsay, you had pointed out that we had this growing understanding of what we should be teaching, and he listed five really fantastic things. Stacey, you elaborated. He also did the same for software. So I think that's an interesting that's interesting. If you have software, use software, or think about software teaching. Software can implement principles of and he listed some bullet points I thought were really good, systematic graphing, phoneme teaching, again, phonics on the software can be very helpful. Attention, active engagement at the child's level, immediate error, feedback, interleaved teaching and testing, automization with regular daily rehearsal. That's what he thought. Software could be really useful and helpful in reading. Oh, that was interesting. And

Stacy Hurst:

I don't know if either of you had the chance to check out kalulu. It's an app you can actually download. They do a couple things that really speak to that no matter the language you're learning to read, by the way, you can use it for any language. They use statistics from the language to teach the most important letter letters and letter combinations first and AI. They use AI to do that. So I think that's interesting. And then they also have articulatory gestures. They teach very explicitly, too. Yeah, I

Donell Pons:

thought that was so great. I'm excited about some of that innovation. I think could be really helpful. He also was very quick to point out the joint importance of decoding and comprehension. Again, that simple view of reading, Stacy, he did a really nice job of elaborating that you need both. He said very, very heavily decoding takes six months to a year. So that typical right spoken language and comprehension takes many years and well, it goes well into adolescence, yeah,

Stacy Hurst:

which is weird, because I think sometimes we're we counter intuitively, flip that, but in English is a little more complex. So when he says six months to a year, he might be talking about French, but our, our our research, it's k2 right? It's kindergarten and first grade are critical, but into second and yeah, he also got really specific. Even if we're adding 10 words a day, starting from the day we're born, it will take 10 to 15 years for us to become master the language, and that's saying nothing of syntax, right? But with phonics, that's why he kept referring to it as a silver bullet. He said, I and then he also pointed out, let's stop opposing decoding and comprehension. You need both. You have to go through decoding to get to comprehension. Wouldn't it be great if we could just get to comprehension? But we can't. We have to go through decoding.

Lindsay Kemeny:

Yeah, you can think of you. You can think about that if you're learning a language, if I, you know, learned French, I could, I could learn those phoneme graphing correspondences and sound out and read a text, but I would have no idea what it said, and it would be really silly to wait until I was able to do that to then start working on the other the language comprehension, right? So it's just the same with our students. We're focusing on both at the same time. I'm not going to wait for one or the other.

Stacy Hurst:

And he points out, even if students have deficits in their oral language development because of home situations or whatever, we actually can help that through reading. If you're teaching read, he actually says it's a gift you can give to them, because if you're teaching them how to read, they're going to naturally improve their oral language ability, their comprehension. And then, along the lines of practical applications, he kind of elaborated a little bit more in the planet word presentation, but he talked about the real importance of active learning associated with reading and writing. And you can, you don't write words that you cannot read, and so he's saying to always include those when you're having your instruction reading and writing. And then he did the one thing that I thought was a little different than how we are. I don't know we were taught to approach this he was talking about, he actually called them sight words, but he was referring to high frequency words. And he he gave a whole list of things not to do, and to me, most of them were just totally understandable. Don't teach kids to guess, don't teach them. I guess, in France, there are some programs are teaching kids the phonetic alphabet. Can you imagine it's hard enough to learn one, you have to go through the other. So he's like, don't do things like that. But one other thing he said was, don't teach any words until you teach the letters. Don't even teach sight words at all. We don't even need to teach those. He's he says, Stop teaching kids to memorize words before we've taught him the alphabet. And he it kind of seemed like he was saying no, no high frequency words till they know how to decode them. Well,

Lindsay Kemeny:

yeah, I didn't get no. I didn't get that no high frequency words. But I just, I totally agree with him, like, why are we teaching it before they've learned the alphabet? And I felt like that's what he was saying. I think that's ridiculous. And I like, waited when I taught kindergarten, I would wait until like November before I would introduce any high frequency words, because I don't want to give them the wrong idea of what reading is, and I want to solidify the alphabet. You know that the sounds those phoneme grabbing correspondences I've been teaching before being like, oh, here we go. Let's you know,

Stacy Hurst:

well, he made it very clear, that's what it's all about, those phoneme grapheme correspondences, even with the irregular words I will say, though. I mean, I've seen it a lot in kindergarten, where teachers will say, Oh, I'm just teaching the and, uh, because they're so common beforehand. And I see that daily, actually. So I'm like, Okay, that was interesting to me, but also the fact that he he is his main his first language is not English. So when he was talking about somebody asked him about having a student who's better, or. Better at reading than spelling, which is really common. He said, Oh, that's not really an issue. And then he said, Oh, wait, but in English, it would be because your phone and graphing correspondences are more irregular, which is why it takes our students longer to learn to read. But yeah, he also wrote a book. Did you get catch that part that's getting translated into English, but it's the cognitive sciences applied in the classroom. So I'm looking forward to that. This

Donell Pons:

has been a long and far reaching conversation, so I hope you've been able to hang in there with us. What we hope the takeaways are, and always again, we're so thrilled that this information is been made, has been made available, not behind a paywall. So you can watch this on YouTube, which is fantastic. And any educator can jump on YouTube watch this great video, and it's having these kinds of people in your arsenal, knowing who Stanislaus is watching out for his work, because he does try to make it readily available to educators. That's the whole point. And he gives us really good understanding of some of some of these concepts. You can see we've had a great, really full bodied conversation today, and this is just a tiny portion right of the information that's available. And as we said and Stacy pointed out earlier, there's alignment. So maybe some of the words that are used are different, maybe the approach might seem a little different, but again, there's alignment in the science. You'll find that in the science of reading, and it's here as well. But this has been fantastic, you guys. I've had such a good time talking. You know, we could do this all day, but we must wrap up,

Stacy Hurst:

I know. And we got a head start on it yesterday. I have to say Lindsay and Donnell did their homework before I did and watched the thing. So your conversation to me was actually like, what? Because you were talking about visual dyslexia, and I'm like, What did he say? That's not a thing like, what? So I'm grateful to have a better understanding now. And just a reminder on this podcast, we pointed out frequently, follow the science, right? Not the person, but Donnell will give you a hall pass in this case, because I think you're all about this person too, because of the science, not I mean, you know, everything else is secondary, including the accent Lindsay. But

Lindsay Kemeny:

he said, developing,

Stacy Hurst:

Oh, definitely, I had to turn because I was transcribing some parts of what he said, I had to turn on subtitles. I didn't quite catch that. Oh, that was great. Well, thank you as ever for the conversation and those of you who are joining us, thank you for being here and doing all you do to help our students learn how to read. We hope you'll join us on the next episode of literacy talks.

Narrator:

Thanks for joining us today. Literacy Talks comes to you from Reading Horizons, where reading momentum begins. Visit readinghorizons.com/literacytalks to access episodes and resources to support your journey in the science of reading.