Author: Mark SeidenbergPublisher:
ISBN: 0465019323
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 385
Book Description
We’ve been teaching reading wrong—a leading cognitive scientist tells us how we can finally do it right
Language at the Speed of Sight
Author: Mark SeidenbergPublisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465080650
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 519
Book Description
In this "important and alarming" (New York Times) book, see why so many American students are falling behind in their reading skills while others around the world excel. The way we teach reading is not working, and it cannot continue. We have largely abandoned phones-based reading instruction, despite research that supports its importance for word recognition. Rather than treating Black English as a valid dialect and recognizing that speaking one dialect can impact the ability to learn to read in another, teachers simply dismiss it as "incorrect English." And while we press children to develop large vocabularies because we think being a good reader means knowing more words, studies have found that a large vocabulary is only an indication of better pattern recognition. Understanding the science of reading is more important than ever--for us, and for our children. Seidenberg helps us do so by drawing on cutting-edge research in machine learning, linguistics, and early childhood development. Language at the Speed of Sight offers an erudite and scathing examination of this most human of activities, and concrete proposals for how our society can produce better readers.
Language at the Speed of Sight
Author: Mark SeidenbergPublisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 0465080650
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
In this "important and alarming" book, see why so many American students are falling behind in their reading skills while others around the world excel (New York Times). The way we teach reading is not working, and it cannot continue. We have largely abandoned phones-based reading instruction, despite research that supports its importance for word recognition. Rather than treating Black English as a valid dialect and recognizing that speaking one dialect can impact the ability to learn to read in another, teachers simply dismiss it as "incorrect English." And while we press children to develop large vocabularies because we think being a good reader means knowing more words, studies have found that a large vocabulary is only an indication of better pattern recognition. Understanding the science of reading is more important than ever--for us, and for our children. Seidenberg helps us do so by drawing on cutting-edge research in machine learning, linguistics, and early childhood development. Language at the Speed of Sight offers an erudite and scathing examination of this most human of activities, and concrete proposals for how our society can produce better readers.
Proust and the Squid
Author: Maryanne WolfPublisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062010638
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 340
Book Description
“Wolf restores our awe of the human brain—its adaptability, its creativity, and its ability to connect with other minds through a procession of silly squiggles.” — San Francisco Chronicle How do people learn to read and write—and how has the development of these skills transformed the brain and the world itself ? Neuropsychologist and child development expert Maryann Wolf answers these questions in this ambitious and provocative book that chronicles the remarkable journey of written language not only throughout our evolution but also over the course of a single child’s life, showing why a growing percentage have difficulty mastering these abilities. With fascinating down-to-earth examples and lively personal anecdotes, Wolf asserts that the brain that examined the tiny clay tablets of the Sumerians is a very different brain from the one that is immersed in today’s technology-driven literacy, in which visual images on the screen are paving the way for a reduced need for written language—with potentially profound consequences for our future.
Author: Diana Hanbury KingOut of Sight
Author: Seymour SimonPublisher: StarWalk Kids Media
ISBN: 1936503891
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 52
Book Description
From deep within the human body to distant nebulae in outer space, there are worlds all around us that are smaller, faster, and farther than the unaided eye can see. In these thirty-six amazing images, you can see the invisible: from a white blood cell attacking E. coli bacteria, to the delicate splash from a falling drop of water captured by a high-speed strobe. With pictures that astound and fascinating explanations of how each image was captured, award-winning author Seymour Simon takes readers on a fantastic voyage that's truly out of sight.
Harnessed
Author: Mark ChangiziPublisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1935618830
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
The scientific consensus is that our ability to understand human speech has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. After all, there are whole portions of the brain devoted to human speech. We learn to understand speech before we can even walk, and can seamlessly absorb enormous amounts of information simply by hearing it. Surely we evolved this capability over thousands of generations. Or did we? Portions of the human brain are also devoted to reading. Children learn to read at a very young age and can seamlessly absorb information even more quickly through reading than through hearing. We know that we didn't evolve to read because reading is only a few thousand years old. In Harnessed, cognitive scientist Mark Changizi demonstrates that human speech has been very specifically “designed" to harness the sounds of nature, sounds we've evolved over millions of years to readily understand. Long before humans evolved, mammals have learned to interpret the sounds of nature to understand both threats and opportunities. Our speech—regardless of language—is very clearly based on the sounds of nature. Even more fascinating, Changizi shows that music itself is based on natural sounds. Music—seemingly one of the most human of inventions—is literally built on sounds and patterns of sound that have existed since the beginning of time. From Library Journal: "Many scientists believe that the human brain's capacity for language is innate, that the brain is actually "hard-wired" for this higher-level functionality. But theoretical neurobiologist Changizi (director of human cognition, 2AI Labs; The Vision Revolution) brilliantly challenges this view, claiming that language (and music) are neither innate nor instinctual to the brain but evolved culturally to take advantage of what the most ancient aspect of our brain does best: process the sounds of nature ... it will certainly intrigue evolutionary biologists, linguists, and cultural anthropologists and is strongly recommended for libraries that have Changizi's previous book." From Forbes: “In his latest book, Harnessed, neuroscientist Mark Changizi manages to accomplish the extraordinary: he says something compellingly new about evolution.… Instead of tackling evolution from the usual position and become mired in the usual arguments, he focuses on one aspect of the larger story so central to who we are, it may very well overshadow all others except the origin of life itself: communication."
How to Read a Person Like a Book
Author: Gerard I. NierenbergPublisher: Barnes & Noble Publishing
ISBN: 9781566194013
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 200
Book Description
This unique program teaches listeners how to "decode" and reply to non-verbal signals from friends and business associates when those signals are often vague and thus frequenly ignored
Author: Brian ButterworthReader, Come Home
Author: Maryanne WolfPublisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062388797
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 233
Book Description
The author of the acclaimed Proust and the Squid follows up with a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies. A decade ago, Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid revealed what we know about how the brain learns to read and how reading changes the way we think and feel. Since then, the ways we process written language have changed dramatically with many concerned about both their own changes and that of children. New research on the reading brain chronicles these changes in the brains of children and adults as they learn to read while immersed in a digitally dominated medium. Drawing deeply on this research, this book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us—her beloved readers—to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums. Wolf raises difficult questions, including: Will children learn to incorporate the full range of "deep reading" processes that are at the core of the expert reading brain? Will the mix of a seemingly infinite set of distractions for children’s attention and their quick access to immediate, voluminous information alter their ability to think for themselves? With information at their fingertips, will the next generation learn to build their own storehouse of knowledge, which could impede the ability to make analogies and draw inferences from what they know? Will all these influences change the formation in children and the use in adults of "slower" cognitive processes like critical thinking, personal reflection, imagination, and empathy that comprise deep reading and that influence both how we think and how we live our lives? How can we preserve deep reading processes in future iterations of the reading brain? Concerns about attention span, critical reasoning, and over-reliance on technology are never just about children—Wolf herself has found that, though she is a reading expert, her ability to read deeply has been impacted as she has become increasingly dependent on screens. Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities—and what this could mean for our future.
