Lecture by prof. Stanislas Dehaene: ‘How the Brain Learns to Read’

I do think that the introduction rather speaks about the importance of cognitive psychology rather than the importance of teachers knowing the brain.

“Cognitive psychology and neuroscience have begun to dissect the neuronal mechanisms of literacy using brain-imaging techniques. During reading acquisition, our brain circuitry recycles several of its pre-existing visual and auditory areas in order to reorient them to the processing of letters and phonemes. The nature of this “neuronal recycling” process helps explain many of the children’s difficulties in learning to read. Our growing understanding of the child’s brain has important consequences for how education should be optimally organized.”

6 thoughts on “Lecture by prof. Stanislas Dehaene: ‘How the Brain Learns to Read’”

  3. Dehaene mentioned the system for speech sounds (pronunciation and articulation) being a very sophisticated system. The numbers of words spoken to children from birth to 5 years old has been measured and It has been found that there are differences of millions of words spoken between high and low SES children. So the likelihood is that this spoken system is likely to be much more developed in high SES children which in turn makes it easier for them to learn to read. Does this make sense?

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