̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - dyslexia

Developmental dyslexia essential to human adaptive success, study argues

cg605 — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 23:00:00 +0000

Cambridge researchers studying cognition, behaviour and the brain have concluded that people with dyslexia are specialised to explore the unknown. This is likely to play a fundamental role in human adaptation to changing environments.

They think this ‘explorative bias’ has an evolutionary basis and plays a crucial role in our survival.

Based on these findings − which were apparent across multiple domains from visual processing to memory and at all levels of analysis − the researchers argue that we need to change our perspective of dyslexia as a neurological disorder.

̽��ֱ��findings, reported today in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, have implications both at the individual and societal level, says lead author Dr Helen Taylor, an affiliated Scholar at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and a Research Associate at the ̽��ֱ�� of Strathclyde.

“ ̽��ֱ��deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn’t telling the whole story,” said Taylor. “This research proposes a new framework to help us better understand the cognitive strengths of people with dyslexia.”

She added: “We believe that the areas of difficulty experienced by people with dyslexia result from a cognitive trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge, with the upside being an explorative bias that could explain enhanced abilities observed in certain realms like discovery, invention and creativity.”

This is the first-time a cross-disciplinary approach using an evolutionary perspective has been applied in the analysis of studies on dyslexia.

“Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning. But we urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges,” said Taylor.

Dyslexia is found in up to 20% of the general population, irrespective of country, culture and world region. It is defined by the World Federation of Neurology as 'a disorder in children who, despite conventional classroom experience, fail to attain the language skills of reading, writing and spelling commensurate with their intellectual abilities'.

̽��ֱ��new findings are explained in the context of ‘Complementary Cognition’, a theory proposing that our ancestors evolved to specialise in different, but complementary, ways of thinking, which enhances human’s ability to adapt through collaboration.

These cognitive specialisations are rooted in a well-known trade-off between exploration of new information and exploitation of existing knowledge. For example, if you eat all the food you have, you risk starvation when it’s all gone. But if you spend all your time exploring for food, you’re wasting energy you don’t need to waste. As in any complex system, we must ensure we balance our need to exploit known resources and explore new resources to survive.

“Striking the balance between exploring for new opportunities and exploiting the benefits of a particular choice is key to adaptation and survival and underpins many of the decisions we make in our daily lives,” said Taylor.

Exploration encompasses activities that involve searching the unknown such as experimentation, discovery and innovation. In contrast, exploitation is concerned with using what's already known including refinement, efficiency and selection.

“Considering this trade-off, an explorative specialisation in people with dyslexia could help explain why they have difficulties with tasks related to exploitation, such as reading and writing.

“It could also explain why people with dyslexia appear to gravitate towards certain professions that require exploration-related abilities, such as arts, architecture, engineering, and entrepreneurship.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that their findings aligned with evidence from several other fields of research. For example, an explorative bias in such a large proportion of the population indicates that our species must have evolved during a period of high uncertainty and change. This concurs with findings in the field of paleoarchaeology, revealing that human evolution was shaped over hundreds of thousands of years by dramatic climatic and environmental instability.

̽��ֱ��researchers highlight that collaboration between individuals with different abilities could help explain the exceptional capacity of our species to adapt.

̽��ֱ��findings are published today in the journal, Frontiers in Psychology.

̽��ֱ��research was funded by the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship, ̽��ֱ�� of Strathclyde.

In more depth

Taylor, H and Vestergaard MD: 'Developmental Dyslexia: Disorder or Specialization in Exploration?' Frontiers in Psychology (June 2022). DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.889245

Find out more about Dr. Helen Taylor (Originator of ̽��ֱ��Evolution of Complementary Cognition) @DrHelenTaylorCC:

Researchers say people with Developmental Dyslexia have specific strengths relating to exploring the unknown that have contributed to the successful adaptation and survival of our species.

“ ̽��ֱ��deficit-centred view of dyslexia isn’t telling the whole story. This research proposes a new framework to help us better understand the cognitive strengths of people with dyslexia.”

Dr Helen Taylor

Catherine Falls Commercial / Moment via Getty Images

Young boy steadily makes his way through a dense forest of trees and cow parsley. He stands out in the green in his bright red jumper.

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Inside the mind of a young person

cjb250 — Thu, 15 Nov 2018 17:18:17 +0000

̽��ֱ��educational neuroscience of dyslexia and dyscalculia

bjb42 — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Developmental dyslexia, which manifests as a difficulty in reading and spelling, affects about 7% of schoolchildren, mostly boys, and presents a major obstacle to educational success, future mental health and lifetime earning. Its mathematical counterpart, developmental dyscalculia, affects about 6% of schoolchildren and is found equally in boys and girls. According to figures released from the UK Government Office for Science, dyscalculia has an even higher impact on educational success than dyslexia.

Early diagnosis and appropriate educational support are known to have lasting benefits for children and adults affected by these disorders. To get this right, a better understanding is needed of how the brain acquires reading and maths skills, and the new field of educational neuroscience is helping to find the answers. In the forefront of these studies is Cambridge’s Centre for Neuroscience in Education. With £2 million recent funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC), the researchers at the Centre aim to discover neural markers for dyslexia and dyscalculia through brain imaging techniques. This will enable affected children to be identified as early as possible and for targeted remediation to be delivered.

A world first

̽��ֱ��Centre for Neuroscience in Education was the first neuroscience laboratory in the world to be established within a Faculty of Education. Launched formally in 2005, with an inaugural conference that attracted 220 teachers and educators from over 15 countries, the Centre now has a team of 24 students and researchers. Staff are trained in a variety of disciplines, spanning psychology, education, medicine, linguistics and physics. ̽��ֱ��Centre is directed by Professor Usha Goswami, with Dr Dénes Szucs as ̽��ֱ�� Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience and Education. In November 2010, the Centre moved to the Department of Experimental Psychology in order to take advantage of on-site new high performance data networks and infrastructure for neuroscience.

From electrochemical signals to education

̽��ֱ��main brain imaging technology used in the Centre is the electroencephalogram (EEG), a technique that can measure the voltage changes that are caused by the electrochemical activity of brain cells. Whenever a child (or adult) is thinking or feeling, tiny electrical changes occur in the brain. These changes can be measured by sensitive electrodes that are placed on the skin of the scalp, mounted in a special hairnet that enables direct recordings of brain activity to be taken. ̽��ֱ��technique is painless, the electrodes are easy to put on and the children enjoy the measurement sessions.

But how can these electrical measurements tell us anything about the process of learning? A developmental dyslexia project is making this link by following over 100 children on a yearly basis for five years, making brain measurements at the same time as analysing speech processing, auditory processing, reading and spelling. One area of particular focus is a specific difficulty in processing the sound patterns of words, a skill called phonological awareness, which has been known for over 20 years to be the hallmark of developmental dyslexia.

̽��ֱ��sound of syllables

Children with dyslexia find it difficult to decide whether words rhyme and to count the number of syllables in a word like oasis. One reason is that aspects of the auditory signal in speech are processed less efficiently by the dyslexic brain.

In a simple auditory tone task that has now been used with dyslexic children learning languages as diverse as English, Spanish, Chinese and Finnish, scientists at the Centre have shown that one particular sound parameter is more difficult to discriminate. A bit like the difference in the onset of loudness between a trumpet note and a violin note, there is a difference in the rate of onset of loudness that occurs as we produce syllables; the Cambridge researchers have found that this is impaired in developmental dyslexia. In fact, this processing difficulty means that children with dyslexia are impaired in any auditory rhythmic task – including perceiving metrical structure in music and tapping along to a beat.

Reading in rhythm

To further complicate matters, the way in which the pre-literate brain represents language is fundamentally different to the way in which the literate brain represents language. Learning to read changes the brain because learning an alphabet makes us conceptualise spoken words in terms of their spelling patterns. We automatically hear spoken language as a series of the kinds of sounds represented by letters (e.g. we hear cat as c + a + t); this connection between sounds and letters is called phonics. ̽��ֱ��dyslexic brain does not have the auditory distinctions efficiently in place to which phonics instruction can be easily linked.

Currently, the main remediation offered to children with developmental dyslexia is yet more intensive instruction in phonics. Instead, the research in Cambridge suggests that interventions based on rhythm and even music may be beneficial, at much earlier ages. Rhythm is more overt in music than in language, and other projects at the Centre have shown that being able to sing in time with music is predictive of syllable and rhyming skills, and that training in rhythm improves phonological awareness. Several educational interventions based on musical and speech rhythms are currently being developed at the Centre.

Magnitude of the problem

̽��ֱ��MRC project on dyscalculia is just beginning but, here too, the neurological basis of the disorder is under scrutiny because a distinct area in the brain’s parietal cortex seems to be specialised for understanding magnitude. Children with dyscalculia have enormous difficulties in making decisions about quantities, such as ‘how much is four?’ Intriguingly, however, scientists at the Centre have shown that the main sensory marker of magnitude difficulties – being slower to make judgements about numbers that are closer together than further apart – is not deficient in children with dyscalculia. But these children do have very poor working memories, finding it both difficult to keep relevant information in mind and to recognise mistakes.

When children start learning maths at school, changes largely occur in the language areas of the brain. ̽��ֱ��ensuing neural connections that form between memory, magnitude and decision-making processes may underlie what goes wrong in dyscalculia. This hypothesis will be explored using a variety of non-invasive imaging techniques at the Centre and in collaboration with the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, in an effort to use spatial imaging technologies to deliver exact information about where the affected networks are in the brain.

With foresight

̽��ֱ��Centre is also beginning to have an input into Government policy. Professor Goswami was the scientific co-ordinator for Learning Difficulties within the Government Office of Science ‘Foresight’ project on Mental Capital and Wellbeing in 2008, one of three Cambridge scientists in the lead team (along with Professors Barbara Sahakian and Felicia Huppert). If the recommendations of the Foresight project are implemented nationally, then the insights from brain science for education will eventually be reflected in the basic training of all the teachers in the country. When that happens, all university Departments of Education will need some expertise in brain science - and as the Centre retains strong links with the Faculty of Education, Cambridge will be well-placed to contribute to such new training.

For more information, please contact the author, Professor Usha Goswami (ucg10@cam.ac.uk), at the Centre for Neuroscience in Education. Research at the Centre is funded by grants from the MRC, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), European Union, Leverhulme Trust and Nuffield Foundation.

For some children, acquiring the important skills of learning to read or do arithmetic is fraught with difficulty. Educational neuroscience is helping to understand why.

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