The Reading Brain with Maryanne Wolf (BS 145)

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The Reading Brain with Maryanne Wolf (BS 145)

BS 145 is an interview with Dr. Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain and Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century: The Literary Agenda. Dr Wolf has spent her career studying how the brain is changed by learning to read. We also explore her concerns about how the shift to digital media will change our reading brains.

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The Reading Brain (BSP 24)

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Episode 24 of the Brain Science Podcast is a discussion of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, by Maryanne Wolf.

How to get this episode:

  • Premium Subscribers now have unlimited access to all old episodes and transcripts.

  • Buy mp3 for $1.

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  • New episodes of the Brain Science Podcast are always FREE.  All episodes posted after January 1, 2013, are free.  See the individual show notes for links the audio files.

Show Notes:

Dr. Wolf's book, Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain, is divided into three main topics: the history of how writing and reading developed over the last few thousand years, the developmental stages involved in learning how to read, and what happens when the brain can't learn to read.  My podcast concentrates on the main ideas from the first two topics.

History of Writing:

  • The discovery of symbols.

  • Early writing systems- cuneiform and hieroglyphics.

  • Why Chinese gives us a window into the past.

  • Importance of the alphabet.

  • Why Socrates opposed literacy.

The stages of becoming a reader:

  • The early pre-reader-with emphasis on language development.

  • The novice reader-connecting letters to the sounds of language.

  • The decoding reader.

  • The fluent comprehending reader-learning to "read between the lines."

  • The expert reader-why reading continues to change us throughout our lives.

  • What goes wrong when the brain can't learn to read: how new findings are leading to new solutions.

Links and References

  • Maryann Wolf, Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University.

  • Her book Proust and the Squid contains extensive references to various scientific studies in the area.

    1. information for teachers.

    2. interview of Dr. Wolf.

  • FastForward -a successful approach to treating dyslexia.

  • Michael Posner - a psychologist who used PET scans to study what happens during shifts of attention (a necessary first step in reading).

Listen in your Favorite Audio app: Audible, Amazon music, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube and many more.

Follow-up interview with Dr. Wolf (BSP 29)