[Reading-hall-of-fame] brain research and reading

[Ken Goodman]

Steve Strauss, a linguist and neurologist has totally refuted the 
Shaywitz gang's "research". See our article
/Brain research and reading: How emerging concepts in neuroscience 
support a meaning construction view of
the reading process/
Steven L. Strauss1*, Kenneth S. Goodman2 and Eric J. Paulson3
Educational Research and Review Vol. 4 (2), pp. 021-033, Feburary 2009
Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/ERR
ISSN 1990-3839 © 2009 Academic Journals

There is in fact a whole body of brain research that some have called a 
memory predication model which shows that the cortex  through the 
thalmus  controls the senses- vision in the case of reading telling the 
eye where to look for what it expects to find. A key fault of the MRI 
studies is that they can only provide information of what the brain does 
in a few milliseconds. The task that they use is to put the head into 
the MRI, flash two "words" before the subject's eyes and have the 
subject push a button to show whether they rhyme or not. Clearily their 
reasoning is circular. They start with the assumption that reading is 
phonoliogical processing. Then they provide a task in which there is no 
connected meaningful text and then are able to show that the brain 
engages in phonological processing. But since whole language advocates 
also believe that there is phonological processing  in reading 
meaningful alphabetic texts along with the processing of lexico 
grammatical and semantic input this task would not refute whole language 
views of reading.

Ken Goodman

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