Cognition : A case study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual dyslexia

ScienceDirect - Cognition : A case study of an English-Japanese bilingual with monolingual dyslexia

Here is a very interesting report, the case of AS, a 16 year-old English/Japanese bilingual boy, whose reading/writing difficulties are confined to English only.

AS was born in Japan to a highly literate Australian father and English mother, and goes to a Japanese selective senior high school in Japan. His spoken language at home is English.

AS's reading in logo-graphic Japanese Kanji and syllabic Kana is equivalent to that of Japanese undergraduates or graduates.

In contrast, his performance in various reading and writing tests in English as well as tasks involving phonological processing was very poor, even when compared to his Japanese contemporaries.

Yet he has no problem with letter names or letter sounds, and his phoneme categorisation is well within the normal range of English native speakers.

The data show a clear dissociation between AS's ability to read English and Japanese, and the research study put forward the ‘hypothesis of granularity and transparency'.

Definitions
The Orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific writing system to write the language and Phonology is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language.

Study Postulation
It is postulated that any language where orthography-to-phonology mapping is transparent, or even opaque, or any language whose orthographic unit representing sound is coarse (i.e. at a whole character or word level) should not produce a high incidence of developmental phonological dyslexia.

A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in Chinese readers

From the Cover: A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers

We are by now aware that Developmental Dyslexia is a neurobiologically based disorder that affects ≈5–17% of school children and is characterised by an impairment in reading skills.

For readers of alphabetic (e.g., English) languages, recent neuroimaging studies (fMRI scans) have demonstrated that dyslexia is associated with weak reading-related activity in left temporoparietal and occipitotemporal regions, and the difference in the activity in this area, may be because of reduced gray matter volume in these areas.

In this research study, they find different structural and functional abnormalities in dyslexic readers of Chinese, a nonalphabetic more graphical language. It has often been said that the Chinese do not experience dyslexia but this is not the case. They may simply experience it in a different way.

In comparison with other developing Chinese children, children with impaired reading in logo-graphic Chinese exhibited reduced gray matter volume in a left middle frontal gyrus region previously shown to be important for Chinese reading and writing.

Using functional MRI to study language-related activation of cortical regions in dyslexics, the study found reduced activation in this same left middle frontal gyrus region in Chinese dyslexics, and there was a significant correlation between gray matter volume and activation in the language task in this same area.

By contrast, Chinese children who suffer from dyslexia did not show functional or structural (i.e., volumetric gray matter) differences from other developing children, in the more posterior brain systems that have been shown to be abnormal in alphabetic-language dyslexics.

The results suggest that the structural and functional basis for dyslexia varies between alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages.

Conclusion
The Western child will work extremely hard, using their frontal lobes to interpret and understand letters and words, without having access to the long term word storage area in the back of the brain. This may be because the frontal lobes are unable to transfer letters and word data to the long term storage areas or the areas are unreceptive because they are under-developed or have limited capacity.

The Chinese child has no reliance on the long term letter and word storage area at the back of the brain or accesses it in a different way. Their reliance is in the capacity of their frontal lobes, which may or may not be fully developed or functional.

Future studies may look at a) the message and delivery service between the frontal lobes and the back of the brain, long term storage and b) the ability of the frontal lobes to connect succesfully with other cognitive parts of the brain.

Saturday Light Humour: 10 Lies Every Parent Should Tell

It's tough being a parent these days. Don't let anyone tell you different. You need to be sharp minded, quick witted and street smart to keep up with these kids.

You need a full toolbox of skills and expertise to get you through the day. One of the best motivational tools we have in our toolbox is the White Lie.

I know what you're saying, 'Isn't that a bad thing to do?' Well maybe, but White Lies are sometimes really motivating, provide quick benefits and are readily available. Why do we need White Lies? Well, because the truth doesn't always produce the a positive outcome.

1. "The tooth fairy called. She said the way you're behaving, you might as well keep the tooth." Parents threaten kids with consequences all the time, but it helps to have a strong third party on call to bring perspective. From Halloween on, throw all your disciplinary needs onto Santa's lap. Outside of that, be creative.


2. "Monsters like to eat dust bunnies. I bet you're going to get lots of monsters in this room." Call it a cleanliness incentive plan but don't leave them alone in the room after. They may never want to go in there again. Offer to stay and help.


3. "Mommy and Daddy aren't fighting; we're rearranging the kitchen." Kids might not buy this one, but in our desire to be right, we jump into fights even if it means exposing our kids to adult conflicts. Need to scream? Get them or yourself out of the house first. Kids feel frustration and anger too, so it's good to show them how to deal with it.


4. "Mommy and Daddy aren't fighting; we're playing leapfrog. On the bed. Without our clothes." In case the makeup sex gets out of hand. Having a good lock on the door is good and making time for yourselves as a 'couple' is even better.


5. "Reading books will make you a millionaire." In today's screen-dominated world, kids must grow up knowing that books, not blogs, will unlock the secrets of their universe. Show them by example and sit with them when they are reading. Make it a 'close', comfortable or cozy thing to do.


6. "Don't worry, sweetie, that can't happen here." Yes, of course it can. Murder, terrorism, earthquakes, etc. they can strike almost anytime, anywhere, especially in the US, but parents must put it into perspective. Balance the bad news trolls with the good news fairies!


7. "I know everything." Before teachers, coaches, and the moody kid down the street get to voice their distorted opinions, parents must establish themselves as a child's go-to encyclopedia for all of life's questions. You don't have to believe that you are the font of all knowledge but your child does. Help them research and investigate questions and use books as well as Google.


8. "That guy is homeless because he didn't eat his vegetables." If you really stretch it, there's science to back this up, given the importance of nutrition to brain health. More important, this lie demonstrates and teaches cause and effect. It gives your child the understanding and power to determine his destiny.


9. "I'm not afraid." Your smile is their Kevlar shield, your hug a proof of love and that everything will be OK if we stick together, share our concerns and work on problems together. No matter how bleak reality might threaten to become, we don't need to face them alone.


10. "This is Mommy's special juice, and it's poison to children." Happy hour is sacred ground and you need to treat yourself to something nice, now and then. Just don't blackout when you're in charge!
    

TOT: Tip-of-the-Tongue and Word Retrieval Deficits in Dyslexia

Tip-of-the-Tongue and Word Retrieval Deficits in Dyslexia -- Hanly and Vandenberg 43 (1): 15 -- Journal of Learning Disabilities

Wikipedia provides a good explanation of TOT It is summarised below;

The tip of the tongue (TOT or Presque vu, from the French for "almost seen") phenomenon is an instance of knowing something that cannot immediately be recalled.

TOT is understood to be an adverse experience or difficulty that we have with our memory recollection. It involves having difficulty retrieving a well-known word or familiar name.

When experiencing TOT, people feel that the blocked word is on the verge of being recovered. So, despite the failure in finding or recalling the word, people have the feeling that the blocked word is figuratively "on the tip of the tongue."

Inaccessibility and the sense of imminence are the two key features of an operational definition of TOTs (A.S. Brown, 1991).

There is a hypothesis that Dyslexia involves phonological processing deficits but not semantic process deficits. To test this hypothesis research scientists brought together a number of children and used tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) responses on a picture-naming task.

Participants in the test included 16 children who were known to be suffering from dyslexia and 31 control children between 8 and 10 years of age who did not differ in receptive vocabulary.

The research seemed to confirm the hypothesis; children with dyslexia demonstrated more TOTs and proportionally more errors in the phonological step of word retrieval but not in the semantic steps. Longer and low-frequency words also prompted more TOTs.

The researchers believe the results provide good evidence of text-independent, on-line phonological processing deficits in readers with dyslexia.

Another Study
A separate study (Maril et al., 2001, p. 657) also found that while attempting to retrieve information, subjects relied heavily on visual spatial clues in correctly retrieving the information.

For example, some subjects in the study that were trying to recall a name described looking at the person's face in attempting to retrieve the name.

Also, when trying to recall the name of an author, the subjects described attempting to read the name of the author from an imagined book.

The authors of the study suggest that the subjects in the fMRI study used a visual imagery strategy when trying to resolve a TOT condition.

This is something that may be familiar when you consider your own memory recollection strategies and that of your children.

Additional Reading
For more information on TOT, including it's use in signing for the deaf and the experiences of multilingual speakers, click on the link to USAToday.

Japanese baby-bot with runny nose: To teach parenting skills

It giggles and wiggles its feet when you shake its rattle, but it will get cranky and cry from too much tickling: Meet Yotaro, a Japanese robot programmed to be as fickle as a real baby.


The cuddly baby-bot looks unearthly with a pair of luminous blue eyes and oversized cheeks, but engineering students are hoping it will teach young people the pleasures of parenting as Japan faces a demographic crisis.

"Yotaro is a robot with which you can experience physical contact just like with a real baby and reproduce the same feelings," said Hiroki Kunimura of Tsukuba University's robotics and behavioral sciences lab north of Tokyo.

Yotaro's face, made of soft translucent silicon with a rosy hue, is backlit by a projector connected to a computer to simulate crying, sneezing, sleeping and smiling, while a speaker can let out bursts of baby giggles.

The baby changes its facial expressions and moves its arms and legs when different parts of its face and body are touched. Physical contact is detected by sensors, and Yotaro's mood changes based on the frequency of touches.

Yotaro also simulates a runny nose, with the help of a water pump that releases body-temperature droplets of water through the nostrils.

While the baby robot has a balloon-sized head and exaggerated facial features, its inventors nonetheless hope "Yotaro could help young parents to learn about raising a baby," said research team member Masatada Muramoto.

"We came up with the idea of a baby robot because we wanted to reproduce a human being's warmth and skin colour," said Kunimura.

Hmm! Not sure if this is the way to secure the future of childbirth and the human species or at least, I'm not sure I want to be a part of it, if it does. What do you think?

Neuroplastic Changes to the Brain using Neurofeedback

A pioneering collaboration between two laboratories from the University of London has provided the first evidence of neuroplastic changes occurring directly after natural brainwave training.

Researchers from Goldsmiths and the Institute of Neurology have demonstrated that half an hour of voluntary control of brain rhythms is sufficient to induce a lasting shift in cortical excitability and intracortical function.

Remarkably, these after-effects are comparable in magnitude to those observed following interventions with artificial forms of brain stimulation involving magnetic or electrical pulses.

The novel finding may have important implications for future non-pharmacological therapies of the brain and calls for a serious re-examination and stronger backing of research on neurofeedback, a technique which may be promising tool to modulate cerebral plasticity in a safe, painless, and natural way.

Inner control of one's own brain activity may be learned with the aid of a brain-computer interface, which acts to display a person's instantaneous brain activation on a computer screen through what is known as a "neurofeedback" loop.

During brainwave neurofeedback, a visual display on a computer screen behaves like a virtual "mirror" to real electrical oscillations produced by neurons in the cerebral cortex, which are recorded by surface sensors on the scalp.

Read the full article here at Science daily

Research on Attention Deficit and Distraction

Reading this story requires you to willfully pay attention to the sentences and to tune out nearby conversations, the radio and other distractions.

But if a fire alarm sounded, your attention would be involuntarily snatched away from this story towards the blaring sound.

New research from Vanderbilt University reveals for the first time how our brains coordinate these two types of attention, and why we may be temporarily blinded by surprises.

"The simple example of having your reading interrupted by a fire alarm illustrates a fundamental aspect of attention: what ultimately reaches our awareness and guides our behaviour, depends on the interaction between Goal-directed and Stimulus-driven attention.

For coherent behaviour to emerge, you need these two forms of attention to be coordinated," René Marois, associate professor of psychology and co-author of the new study, said. "We found a brain area, the Inferior Frontal Junction, that may play a primary role in coordinating these two forms of attention."

The researchers were also interested in what happens to us when our attention is captured by an unexpected event.

"We wanted to understand what caused limitations in our conscious perception when we are surprised," Christopher Asplund, a graduate student in the Department of Psychology and primary author of the new study, said. "We found that when shown a surprise stimulus, we are temporarily blinded to subsequent events."

Using fMRI scanning, the researchers found that the Inferior Frontal Junction, a region of the lateral prefrontal cortex, was involved in both the original task and in the reaction to the surprise.

"What we think might be happening is that this brain area is coordinating different attention systems -- it has a pre-defined response, both when you are controlling your attention and when you feel as though your attention is distracted or jerked away," Asplund said.

The researchers hypothesise that we may be temporarily blinded by surprise because the surprise stimulus and subsequent response occupies so much of our processing ability.

"The idea is not so strange or difficult to understand, we can't attend to everything at once," Asplund said. "It seems that the Inferior Frontal Junction is involved in this limitation in attention."

The new research supports previous work by Marois' laboratory that found the interior frontal junction plays the role of an attentional bottleneck -- limiting our ability to multitask and attend to many things at once.

"These new findings and our previous findings suggest that this area is centrally involved in the control of attention and may limit our attentional capacities," Marois said. "It is a very exciting convergence of findings across our studies. We're conducting studies now to demonstrate whether in fact disruption of activity in this brain region leads to loss of control of attention."

If you want to know more or wish to read the full study click on this link

Another useful link and very professional website is Vanderbilt's Online Research Magazine

BRITE Initiative for Advice & Training on Inclusion Technologies in UK

BRITE (UK) provides information, advice and training on inclusive education, assessment and enabling technologies in Scotland.

The BRITE (UK) BLOG latest news - What's new on the BRITE Blog: Accessible learning resources; Sight Village VI tech exhibition;

Creating inclusive environments for Deaf Students and learners.

Access the latest news and views from the BRITE team any time from the menu bar on every page or click here to visit the Blog direct.

If you want more information on the Scottish Government's bill for Implementing Inclusion and Realising Potential in Learning click on this link.

Dyslexia and ADHD (ADD) Introduction

If this interested you and you want to watch the whole documentary simply click here. This link will take you to my previous blog

Documentary: Inside the hidden world of Dyslexia and ADHD (ADD)

Click on the picture to run the video. This will take you to the Headstrong website where you can play the complete PBS video.

If you wish to watch it in smaller episodes it is available in YouTube format here

This is a very informative, half hour, documentary film from Headstrong about the US Initiative for Learning Identities.

Make some time for yourself, sit down with a refreshing drink and watch it from end to end, you will be encouraged by it.

Although it is US based, it covers the real life experiences of real people, living their lives with Dyslexia and ADHD (ADD)

The US website referred to in the video is www.iliweb.org