It was easier for the people in the studies to experience-take while reading when it came to a character they could identify with, and if they were reading at a time and in a place where they could become immersed in the story. Although participants did have a harder time mentally experiencing the behaviors of characters they couldn’t immediately relate to, some devices used by authors to bring readers closer to the character before casting judgment could help, such as waiting to divulge their race or sexual orientation until the middle of the story.

Experience-taking to open the mind’s eye to the experiences of others is a cornerstone of moral development for young people, and can serve as a safe way for young people to explore the world around them and gain the wisdom of others. In the video below, Jeremy Rifkin takes this notion even further, proposing that our ability to use empathy and to experience-take is the driving force behind a flourishing global civilization.

Lehrer notes that forced focus on a task can often be counterproductive. While it’s natural to need some structure to encourage progress, when taken too far, forcing focus can cause anxieties that distract from our ability to perform well. He adds that taking breaks when feeling stuck or frustrated during intellectual work is an effective way of relaxing and encouraging more productive brain function. Thus, while setting realistic goals and schedules is also important, students with an anxious temperament, or those who are having difficulty with a task can benefit from frequent breaks, particularly at times when it is apparent that their emotional responses have begun pulling their attention away from the task or causing them great worry about their performance on it.

Brain breaks, such as the one shown in the video below, have become a popular way of releasing the natural tension students feel completing academic tasks for long periods at a desk. Notice that the students in this video describe their classroom brain breaks as a “mini recess” and a way to “be calm.” It is no coincidence that their brain breaks serve the same purpose for their classwork that Lehrer’s walks do for his creative process.

The article also mentions another study in which people were told that their performance following a small dot with their eyes would earn them a large sum of money. One third of the group participating didn’t notice a number of larger dots that flashed around the small dot during the test, whereas they were virtually always noticed by another group of people who were not offered money for their performance on the same task. Since they could relax and treat game more casually, they could broaden their focus.

So, not only does anxiety draw our attention from what we ought to be focusing on, it can also dramatically narrow our perception even when we are able to engage in a given task. In particular, if we are worried about a certain aspect of our performance on a task, our entire attention can be sucked into monitoring our achievement on it. Thus, it is very difficult, if not impossible, for students who have anxiety about reading, to address other cognitive tasks at the same time they are supposed to be decoding: their ability to understand content, locate answers to questions, or make creative inferences, all important to success with reading assignments, will be stifled. If the lesson’s objective is one of the higher level reading skills, they should receive assistance with decoding, in order for them to be able to give their attention to the skill they will be measured for.

Furthermore, an obvious and essential component of learning is an ability to be open to the unknown or unexpected. Just like the lucky people in the study, who were open to a wide range of information, students will be more successful academically if they are able to take a more relaxed, confident, big-picture view of their assignments, discovering complexities and connections. Thus, their affect toward their work and their academic performance can be greatly improved if the pressure they feel to achieve is reduced to the level at which they feel self-efficacious.

Take a look at the video below, in which Colin Robertson puts on a fun and inspiring demonstration about how the unexpected can enliven and engage us, and encourage openness and relaxation. All students deserve these experiences of wonder and joy in their learning, but brain science tells us that many won’t be able to do so until their anxiety is alleviated.

In a recent study at Emory University in Atlanta, scientists observed the brains of monkeys, and found that the connections between the area that processes many negative emotions, the amygdala, and the area of the brain responsible for focus and attention, the reticular nucleus, were unusually strong. The strength of these connections, that override other competing inputs for attention, is adaptive, they noted, in situations where true, imminent dangers that threaten someone’s wellbeing should interrupt our focus, in order to save our life.

However, in a classroom setting, students’ brains often process problems or worries in the same way, making in difficult or impossible for them to focus sufficient attention on academic learning. Children who experience anxiety, depression, or other stresses, have emotional needs that must be met in order for them to bring their full attention to school work.

In the video below, a neuroscientist goes into further detail about the workings of the amygdala and how it affects our experiences and behaviors.

One way to implement more meaningful learning is to use graphic organizers which help students make connections between academic and personal knowledge, or to a related idea they previously learned. Helping students to see patterns or trends in information, to come to conclusions about where it fits into the big picture of the unit or their lives, will facilitate their ability to retrieve new knowledge readily in a variety of contexts and apply it to complex problems.

An inquiry model might also be used to teach vocabulary in any subject. When students are asked an exciting real-life question and challenged to use newly-learned words to solve the problem, they are required to make connections and to go back more than once, to access new concepts in a way that encourages the formation of long-term memories of word definitions.

For this teacher, the time her students take to form important connections is called a “consolidation,” which she encourages them to undertake about every 20 minutes in class, even if it only turns out to be a brief verbal exchange. Whether these neural connections are created informally or with the use of a more structured program, like the software described in our previous post, they are essential to meaningful learning of new vocabulary concepts.

Below, neuroscientist Eric Kandel expounds on the function of previous knowledge (or stored memories) in shaping our everyday experiences. He believes that comparisons of stored memory to new experiences are the foundation of human perception, based on his research.

The vocabulary program the researchers implemented provided interactive multimedia activities that prompted children to learn and review new words in groupings. However, the author emphasized that any activity requiring students to group or categorize words according to similarities in their meaning would likely benefit young learners.

In the interview, she notes that effective vocabulary instruction can have an especially important impact on students who are reading below grade level, as they are given texts to read that are at their instructional level for reading but that may not introduce them to a significant amount of new words and concepts. This vocabulary deficiency can exacerbate their difficulties when combined with their other reading deficits.

In the TED presentation video below, Deb Roy finds an innovative way to track the patterns of the words used in his household, as his toddler learns to speak.

Dyslexic students had trouble differentiating between two versions of the same musical piece. The only difference between the two versions was the length of the accented notes in the song. Children without reading difficulties could pick out the difference at higher rates than struggling readers. As a result of their findings, the researchers suggested that musical training, especially in the early years, is a reading intervention that deserves more attention and further study.

In this video shown at the Neurosciences Institute website, about a dancing cockatoo who became a sensation on YouTube, one brain scientists explores the proposition that our rhythmic perceptions were developed in order to perceive and mimic language.

Their study observed the cognitive processes of participants with dyslexia, finding that the subjects’ brain activity seemed to be lower than normal when listening to tones with the frequency of speech sounds. On the other hand, this area of their brains were overly attentive when it came to sounds with more high-frequency rhythms. The researchers for this study noted that an impeded or over-active brain could interfere with the listener’s ability to commit these speech sounds to memory. Having a hard time recognizing the individual phonemes that make up speech can interfere with a student’s ability to absorb normal reading instruction that relies on linking a large variety of combined speech sounds to word symbols.

In the video below, another neuroscientist demonstrates how our perceptions of sound influence our recognition the patterns of language, which depends on the timing and tone of what we hear. After watching and listening, we can begin to understand how a cognitive interference with speech sounds could be an important obstacle for student learning.

Understanding music and language both require a recognition of pattern on the part of the reader or listener. Some studies have even demonstrated students can achieve greater vocabulary knowledge and retention if recognition of patterns is built into the word-learning tasks, as we will discuss in our next entry.

Patterns are everywhere when it comes to reading, including in stories. They are concepts rife with opportunity to challenge children to think critically about language. Check out this list of children’s stories, categorized by the types of patterns the writer employs in the narrative or language structures.

Using brain imaging technology, researchers found a correlation between students’ reading ability and the level of their brain activity when listening to rhythmic sounds. The students who read better showed more brain activity than their struggling-reader counterparts when listening to rhythms, as opposed to random sounds. These more brain-active listeners also had a greater musical performance ability. The scientists who oversaw the study concluded that the brain’s cognitive processes while hearing and practicing music are similar to those used when reading.

This evidence lends credence to the notion that literacy skills are not isolated skills–that a variety of classroom activities and experiences can have an impact on the development of literacy skills in young children. When we reduce literacy learning to the practice of isolated skills, we may also risk neglecting some of the more complex brain processes involved in the development of superior reading and writing ability.

Below, writer and musician Daniel Levitin discusses some of the skills that humans develop as they learn music, such as pattern recognition and perspective taking, that could also be useful for the development of children’s literacy.