Center For the Neural Basis of Cognition

This project brings together behavioral scientists, functional brain imagers, computational modelers, and computer scientists in an effort to consider educational interventions designed to enhance literacy. Two components of the project each explore a different key idea relevant to an important aspect of literacy learning. A third component applies these ideas in a practical tutoring environment.

• Speech recognition: This component addresses a pre-requisite for literacy learning, the ability to accurately identify the different speech sounds or phonemes of one's native language.
  
  
  • The key idea is that the brain may learn by reinforcing whatever pattern of neural activity is elicited during execution of a mental activity, such as listening to spoken language or reading words aloud.
    
    
  • Therefore, any training regime that elicits the undesired neural activity (including incorrect perception or overt response) may be counterproductive.

• Componential Representation: This component addresses the problem of learning to map from spelling to sound, and considers the role of the student's prior representation of word sounds and the benefits of calling students' attention to the correspondences between letters and phonemes in promoting learning.

  
  
  • The key idea is that componential representation of word spellings and word sounds promotes a form of learning that allows reading skill to generalize effectively from words encountered in training to other words.
  
  

• Computerized literacy instruction: A third component embeds tests of the relevance of these ideas to educational outcomes, using 'in vivo' experiments in a real world setting, using an automated reading tutor that can monitor student's reading and provide hints and/or corrective feedback.

  
  
  • This component tests the idea, related to the key idea under component 1, that preventing students from making errors by providing hints or cues to let them read difficult words correctly may promote learning.

Supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9720348. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.