November 27, 2024 • 45 mins
Susan is joined by Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, to give educators the perspective of a developmental cognitive neuroscientist on literacy development. Starting with the basics of cognitive science versus brain science, Ioulia gives a comprehensive overview into how the brain changes as children learn to read, including differences seen in neurodiverse students and multilingual/English learners. Ioulia then answers a question from our listener mailbag on neuroscience and dyslexia and how current research can inform teaching strategies. Ioulia ends with a rallying message that scientists, teachers, and children cannot stand alone and need to find ways to connect with each other to strengthen literacy as a whole.
Show notes:
- Submit your literacy questions for a chance to win!
- Website: Language & Literacy Lab
- Video: Language & Literacy Project at the University of Michigan
- Listen: Our mini-series exploring how the Science of Reading serves MLs/ELs
Quotes:
“We are different learners. And these are really different learners. And by giving them literacy instruction, targeted literacy instruction, we are changing their brains. But that doesn't mean we're making them the same.” —Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D.
“We talked about languages being different. They're exercising slightly different muscles of your language system.” —Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D.
“Science is informed by teachers and children. We're all together. I do not teach children. Teachers don't usually do science. But we have to find ways of connecting with each other.” —Ioulia Kovelman, Ph.D.
Episode timestamps*
02:00 Introduction: Who is Ioulia?
06:00 Cognitive science vs brain science
08:00 How the brain changes as children learn to read
11:00 Following brain development for children that struggle with language development
14:00 Physical differences in brain development between the average brain and a neurodiverse brain
17:00 Mailbag question: Neuroscience and dyslexia
20:00 How neuroscience informs teaching strategies for children with dyslexia
25:00 Monolingual vs multilingual brains
33:00 Language literacy lab
38:00 Connecting research to classroom instruction
41:00 Final thoughts
*Timestamps are approximate, rounded to nearest minute
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ioulia Kovelman (00:00):
The use of neuroimaging allows us to, for
instance, compare children whomight actually have the same
reading abilities, but may havevery different strategies for
reading.
Susan Lambert (00:15):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading (00:18):
The Podcast from Amplify . How might recent
advances in neuroscience andcognitive psychology reshape
our understanding of dyslexiaand other reading disabilities?
That fantastic question, fromour listener mailbag, will be
answered on today's episode,with developmental cognitive
(00:39):
neuroscientist Ioulia Kovelman.
Dr. Kovelman is a professor ofpsychology at the University of
Michigan, and the director ofthe Language & Literacy Lab.
And she's joining us duringthis season-long reading reboot
to explore how developmentalcognitive neuroscience can
support the work of teachersand educators in literacy
(01:00):
development. Let's get to theconversation. Well, Dr . Ioulia
Kovelman, it's so great to haveyou on today's episode. I think
you said it's OK if I call youIoulia, is that right?
Ioulia Kovelman (01:13):
Yes, of course. Please do.
Susan Lambert (01:14):
Well, we would love if you could introduce
yourself to our listeners, andjust say a little bit about
your background, and what youdo.
Ioulia Kovelman (01:20):
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for
joining us today. My name isIoulia Kovelman. I am a faculty
at the University of Michigan.
I study how children learn toread, especially children who
are multilingual and speak morethan one language. As you can
hear in my accent, I am also animmigrant in the United States.
(01:46):
Russian is my native language.
I have traversed multiplecountries and spaces and
languages, and have lived inimmigrant and refugee spaces.
So I understand the challengesthat children face when they
are in a new space, in a newschool, and faced with a new
(02:07):
language. And among them arechildren with learning
differences. We wanna do thebest for our kids. This is what
I do. This is what our labstudies.
Susan Lambert (02:18):
That's awesome.
And we'll talk a little bitmore about your lab later, but
I think you are officially adevelopmental cognitive
neuroscience scientist. Is thatright?
Ioulia Kovelman (02:28):
That is correct. I'm a developmental
cognitive neuroscientist.
Susan Lambert (02:32):
What exactly do they do, or do you do? And
maybe even, particularly, whyshould educators care about
what you do?
Ioulia Kovelman (02:40):
Of course. So we are scientists. We're
researchers who study theintersection between children's
cognitive development andchildren's brain development.
We think they have something todo with each other. And about
20 years ago, you could studychildren's cognitive
(03:02):
development, but you couldn'treally study children's brain
development, because our brainimaging methods were not child
friendly. So the only way wewould do it is on animal
models. But , mice don't go toschool, and neither do
cats. So, as brain imagingmethods have improved and
became more child friendly, wenow have this new and exciting
(03:24):
discipline. Again, it's nowbeen probably around 20 years,
but we're still excited aboutit, that we can now study
children's brain developmentand cognitive development
together. The reason we thinkeducators should care about
this is because, first of all,this is science. And science is
important. All kinds ofsciences are important. We have
(03:45):
been teaching children sincethe beginning of humanity. We
have also been trying to treatand remedy each other since the
beginning of humanity. At thesame time, we no longer use
like bloodletting and leechesto treat disease. And neither
do we ask children to memorizeverbatim chunks of Homer as
(04:07):
part of our education system.
We have made great progress,and part of that is scientific
development. Research isimportant in informing how we
approach anything, fromtreating cancer to helping
children learn how to read.
Both are equally as important.
The use of neuroimaging allowsus to, for instance, compare
(04:28):
children who might actuallyhave the same reading
abilities, but may have verydifferent strategies for
reading. And so it's hard tocapture when you're just
looking at how children read.
When you look at how the brainworks, you gain an additional
insight into how this childreads a word compared to
(04:48):
another child. And that givesus insights into both typical
and atypical reading, as wellas reading strategies that
might be more individualizedand better tailored to an
individual learner.
Susan Lambert (05:03):
So can I ask a super basic question? And I'm
hoping you can help us withthis. You talk about the
differences between cognitivescience and neuroscience. And I
think I have this right, buthelp me if I'm wrong. Cognitive
scientists really study themind, and neuroscientists study
(05:24):
the brain. If you were tryingto explain the differences
between the mind and the brain,or cognitive science and
neuroscience, how would you dothat? How would you explain
those differences?
Ioulia Kovelman (05:36):
I am a developmental cognitive
neuroscientist. So, I studymind and brain together. If you
just study the brain, then youwould be interested in, for
instance, how parts of thebrain that support memory
develop. So hippocampus, right?
So, I would be using mousemodels. I might teach the mice
(05:58):
something. I may then euthanizethe mice, and look at their
brains, and see how that brainchanged. Or slice the brain
into pieces, and put it in aPetri dish, and look at it.
There are neuroscientists whostudy Alzheimer's disease,
right? You cannot diagnoseAlzheimer's until somebody is
dead. And then you take theirbrain, and you slice it into
(06:20):
pieces, you put it into Petridishes, and you analyze the
tissue. That's pureneuroscience. When the brain
has been disconnected from theperson, and it's in a Petri
dish, that's pure neuroscience.
Susan Lambert (06:33):
Yikes, .
Ioulia Kovelman (06:34):
And cognitive neuroscientists like to look at
living children, and howthey're thinking, and how their
brain works when they'rethinking. We don't just look at
the brain in a Petri dish, ifyou will. We look at it
together with the person.
Susan Lambert (06:50):
That's exciting, helpful, and makes me feel a
little bit better about thework that you do. Super
interesting. And thanks fortaking that little side step .
Related to reading developmentthen, how does the brain change
when children are learning howto read?
Ioulia Kovelman (07:09):
There are two major changes. One is that
parts of the brain that supportspeaking connect, or connect in
different ways, to the parts ofthe brain that support visual
object recognition. All of usrecognize a stop sign, right?
(07:31):
You don't have to know the wordstop. It kind of looks
universal, right? You recognizethe sign, you know what it
means, and all of a sudden youactually take these symbols,
and they're not connected toentire concepts, but actually
individual sounds, right? Catis made of C-A-T, and you've
learned these letters, and nowyou need to connect them to the
sounds. And then you actuallymemorize the entire form cat.
(07:54):
And cat doesn't look like dog.
Because for proficient readers,when we see a word, we do it
really quickly. We don'tanalyze it, right? Because this
is immediate recognitio. So thebrain changes, it really
changes. Because when you beginto read, you really have to
analyze everything in front ofyou. The letter, the shape of
(08:15):
the letter, how it connects tothe sound. And proficient
readers just look at the wholething, and they grab it, and
it's like they heard it. It'salmost no difference. I speak,
I read, it's a continuousstream of language. And I just
grab it. And so that's a bigneurological change. You have
connected the parts of thebrain that recognize visual
information, visual symbols, tothe parts of the brain that
(08:38):
process language as you hearit. And the second big change
is the fine-tuning of thelanguage system.
Susan Lambert (08:46):
Oh , tell me more.
Ioulia Kovelman (08:47):
No adult goes around saying cat dog, and yet
that is exactly what you needto do in order to read. So you
all of a sudden become anexpert in your own language.
You fine-tune your language,your own language systems. All
(09:12):
of us become linguists, right?
Even though we don't have a PhDin linguistics, but all of us
who learn how to read gain alot of insights into what words
are made of and what sentencesare made of. And the better we
do it, the better readers weare. So we are fine-tuning our
own language system. The brainchanges. If your mind changes,
(09:37):
your brain changes as well. Sothere's two big things that are
happening. One of them is thatyou've connected speech to
vision. And second, you havefine-tuned your language, and
you've connected it toattention and memory. That
entire circuit of capabilitiesbecomes specialized. You become
(09:59):
a specialist, right? You startas a beginning shoemaker, and
you come out as an expertshoemaker. But here, you begin
speaking, and then you come outas an expert user of language.
Susan Lambert (10:09):
For kids that really struggle to develop, can
you actually follow that, theway the brain works and looks
differently? In terms of whatyou're looking at? In terms of
the brain imaging?
Ioulia Kovelman (10:22):
Correct, correct. This is when we
started the discussion on whywe use neuroimaging. What
additional information does itgive you? That's exactly where
we're at. In our lab, and manyother labs we look at, we bring
two groups of children. Onegroup of children is seven,
they're happy-go-lucky. Theyare learning to read, and they
(10:45):
are what we call at gradelevel. And then we'll bring a
group of nine-year-oldchildren. They have a history
of dyslexia, but they read likethe seven-year-olds. If I had a
blindfold on, and didn't seethe child's age, and I just ask
them to read the words, theseven-year-old and the
(11:06):
nine-year-old will beidentical. Now, we're gonna use
brain imaging, and we're gonnalook at what are the
differences between theseven-year-old who is
happy-go-lucky, they loveschool, they love to read, and
a nine-year-old who is astruggling reader. And then I
(11:27):
might have two nine-year-olds.
I might have a nine-year-oldwho was just diagnosed, and is
gonna go into therapy. I mighthave a nine-year-old who maybe
their older brother haddyslexia, and the parents were
already aware, so they got themtested early. And this
nine-year-old has already hadtherapy. What's the difference?
So, I can get kids who readidentically, they're gonna read
(11:49):
the same number of words, theyrecognize the same kinds of
words, and yet we're expectingdifferences in how they process
them . The concept ofneurodiversity is profound. We
are different learners. Andthese are really different
learners. And by giving themliteracy instruction, targeted
(12:13):
literacy instruction, we arechanging their brains. But that
doesn't mean we are making themthe same as the happy-go-lucky
seven-year-old who is nothaving any difficulties and
enjoys learning how to read. Weas teachers would say we are
helping them developcompensatory or alternative
strategies. These are thestrategies that an average
(12:35):
reader may not require. But weare helping their mind to
develop these strategies. Andwe're helping their brain
rewire to be a reader. Childrenwith dyslexia can be readers.
Here, on the University ofMichigan campus, we have
students with dyslexia. Andthey have done so well that
(12:57):
they are students here at theUniversity of Michigan. And on
many campuses around the world,we have students who have
struggled. And I've talked tothese students, but they're
reading. They're reading justlike their classmates. They're
getting through the textbooks.
They're doing so different. Weknow this, and that's what
brain imaging gives us.
Susan Lambert (13:17):
Is there an easy way to share an example of what
it might physically look likedifferent? I know this is a
podcast and we're talking, sowe can't show any images, but
if you're looking at the brainthat is, let's say, typically
developing.
Ioulia Kovelman (13:36):
Average. What an average group does and
variation, right?
Susan Lambert (13:40):
Thank you for that. We'll talk about that.
And if we were looking at anaverage development of a brain,
how does it physically lookdifferent from kids that maybe
have more neurodiversity?
Ioulia Kovelman (13:53):
So there's really nice work by my
colleagues in Boston and, who looked at the
children before and after theyhad begun to read, and looked
at a group of children whoseemed at risk. They were
(14:15):
kindergartners, or pre-readers.
They tested them and then therewere follow-ups. When you know
these children in grade two arenot doing well in terms of
learning, they're able to goback and look at how brains
looked before they even startedlearning to read. And some of
these kids seem to be doingbetter than others in that
(14:35):
group. What they're seeing isthat the kids with reading
difficulties but who seem to bedoing better than other
children with readingdifficulties, have better
support systems in their righthemisphere. We have two
hemispheres, right and left. Wetypically think of the left
hemisphere of being ourlanguage hemisphere, and we
(14:58):
typically think of our righthemisphere as doing other
lovely things, visual-spatialprocessing, etc. There's a job
for everything in the brain , but this is to the
point that neurodiversity isabout us being different. And
some of us just don't have thesame left hemispheres, the
average left hemispheres. Butyou still have to go to school,
(15:21):
and learn how to read. So itseems like the stronger your
right hemisphere is, the betterit's able to catch that job,
and help you do that job that,for whatever reason, your left
hemisphere is not doing a goodjob supporting. That's really
the macro level, the largelevel of thinking about this.
(15:44):
Those of us who are in thefield of monitoring this
exciting work in ourlaboratory, we look at how
children read words for meaningand sound. And it looks like
children with dyslexia engagemeaning more. So the parts of
(16:05):
the brain circuits that processword meaning more so than the
average readers. The averagereaders have heavier reliance
on sound. How does the wordsound? Oh, I know what the word
is. And so, there's a stronggrab onto the meaning, and
meaningful parts of words, thathelps them think about that. We
(16:25):
start with that. Like, whatchanges when you learn how to
read? You become betterthinking about language. And it
seems like children who havedyslexia have real difficulty
thinking about the sounds ofthe words, which is really
important if you wanna mapsounds onto letters.
Compensatory mechanisms ,different parts of the brain,
different cognitive strategies.
(16:48):
You have to get there.
Susan Lambert (16:49):
You know, that's a really good segue, because we
have a question from ourlistener mailbag from Miracle
Foster, who's a teacher inMichigan, who asks, "How might
recent advances in neuroscienceand cognitive psychology
reshape our understanding ofdyslexia and other reading
disabilities? And whatimplications could these
(17:12):
developments have for creatingmore effective and personalized
teaching strategies?"
Ioulia Kovelman (17:18):
That is a very good one! Yes, that's perfect.
That is exactly where the fieldis at. We can ask the entire
field. The field is big, andeverybody follows their own
personal interests for onereason or another. Our
laboratory has been focused onwords. And we talk about sounds
(17:41):
and meanings. Between soundsand meanings are lexical
morphemes. Lexical morphemesare the smallest units of sound
that have meaning. So a cat .
That's it. It has a meaning.
Cut doesn't, but cat does. Andsometimes you can say snow. So
(18:04):
snow. But now we have snowman.
It's one word, but it's madeout of two lexical morphemes,
snow and man. Or the word undo, un and do are two different
(18:25):
elements, but each of them is amorpheme. So there's lexical
morphemes. We have known thatsounds and thinking about
sounds is difficult forchildren with dyslexia. You
take a word dog, you need toknow that it's do all good. You
need to think about the sounds.
And then you map sounds ontoletters. And that's what
children with dyslexia, atleast initially, find really
(18:46):
difficult. And as we talkedabout, the children with
dyslexia seem to be learningwords more or less OK. They're
learning words , cats and dogs,and they can talk and have a
conversation. Great. Butmorphemes are in between.
They're neither sounds norentire words. This is sort of
like this in-between piece. Andsome have said, "Well, it
(19:08):
should be part of theimpairment, because children
with dyslexia should havedifficulties breaking words
into pieces and then mappingthese pieces onto orthography
." And others have said, "No,this should be a strength,
because these pieces havemeaning, and meaning seems to
be good." So maybe that'sactually a strength, and we
(19:28):
should capitalize on that. Andso that's what we've been
looking at in our lab for sometime. And we are really excited
to see that it is a strength.
There's a lot of discussionabout deficits, right? This is
wrong, and that is wrong. Thestruggle here, and the struggle
there. Well, we are reallyexcited that these elements of
(19:50):
meaning are good and they'refunctioning. They're resilient.
I used the word good , butthey're resilient. So now,
we're going to teachingstrategies. We just talked that
when I ask children withdyslexia to work with a word,
such as snowman, they're fine.
They're doing really well. Andso, we are thinking that this
(20:11):
should have direct implicationsfor teaching instruction. You
have a student, and they'restruggling in breaking words
into sounds, and mapping theminto letters, but teach them
how to break words into biggerchunks. Bigger chunks. Un and
do, these are bigger chunks ofundo. And if they know how to
(20:32):
do it well, now they can grabonto the units of meaning and
the units of sound, and alsoorthography. Think about the
words magic and magician. Theydon't sound the same, but they
are spelled the same, becauseyou've grabbed onto these
pieces. And not all morphemesare made the same. Some of
(20:55):
them, like snowman, snow, andman, each have a meaning. And
words like unlikely. Like has ameaning, but un won't stand on
its own, and ly won't stand onits own. So kids with dyslexia
also have difficulty with that.
And we think of that asgrammar. Often we don't think
about that as sounds. But it'skind of grammatical, because
(21:19):
it's so abstract. And we don'talways teach it even to average
children. We don't usually havesystematic construction in
morphology. We think, "Oh,well, they speak English, they
can speak it . They know it."Well, some of them are smart
enough and they'll figure itout with enough experience. But
even an average reader doesbetter when you teach them,
(21:42):
explicitly, this is what thisis, this is how it is put
together. Here's the un andhere's how it works in English.
And if you put them to a verb,now you've undone it. You've
uninvited somebody. So it'simportant. And kids with
dyslexia struggle with that.
And again, we're back toinstruction now. You have to
(22:04):
help them with that. We seethat the kinds of circuits,
brain circuits, that do notwork well for sound are the
same circuits that do not workwell for these abstract
morphemes, like on , on and raw. And I was visiting UT Dallas
just the other week, and I metwith a colleague, Dr. Julia
(22:28):
Evans, and we had this exactconversation. She is also a
speech therapist. And she said,"Oh, this makes perfect sense.
I was working with a child, whohas a language problem, and I
was showing them pictures. Igive you a word, and you give
me a new word. I give you aword, teach, and you give me a
(22:48):
word, teacher. I give you aword, paint, and you give me a
word, painter. I give you aword jog, and then the child
says, "Cool aerobics lady.""
Susan Lambert (23:01):
.
Ioulia Kovelman (23:04):
Right, this is what we're talking about. When
a child with language orreading problems quickly put
together a word made out ofwords, they can make words .
They're not stupid. They'resmart. All children are smart.
They can make new words. But,you were expecting jogger, a
grammatical form. Instead, yougot a cool aerobics lady ,
(23:27):
which is what we call acompound word . So there's a
strength, and there's adeficit. And now you know where
you have something that'sresilient, and something that's
fragile and you have to helpthem .
Susan Lambert (23:41):
That's a great example.
Ioulia Kovelman (23:42):
That's from a therapy session, to brain
imaging, to intervention. 1, 2,3.
Susan Lambert (23:48):
We'll look at that. Shoutout to Miracle for
such a great question. Thankyou so much for that. And our
listeners can submit otherliteracy questions too . We're
excited about other ones wemight get. Let's make a little
bit of a shift from thedifferences between typically
developing kids andneurodiverse to the brains of
(24:10):
monolingual and bilingualchildren. Because that's also a
hot topic too. Are theredifferences there that we
should know about?
Ioulia Kovelman (24:17):
There are, and there are very interesting. And
for good reasons. There aredifferences between languages.
And that's just how we roll .
We do not inherit language fromour parents. It's a good thing,
because then we can make newwords. Look, we've got iPhones,
and we've got all sorts of coolstuff, and we can come up with
(24:39):
new words, morphology, right?
So we make all this new stuff,like cool aerobics ladies . But
the other part of it is that wehave different languages. We
didn't inherit language fromour parents. We only inherited
the ability to have language.
So language is a difference,and because language is
different, orthography is adifference. There is a link
between language andorthography , and maybe that's
(25:00):
for a different conversation.
But the end result is that inSpanish, when you hear gato,
you are going to spell gato. InEnglish, when you hear
neighbor, I don't know whatyou're gonna spell. I cannot
even spell it out. I'm sorry.
Susan Lambert (25:13):
< Laugh > .
Ioulia Kovelman (25:14):
And I feel very sorry for all the English
speakers who have to deal withthis every single day. In fact,
of all the alphabeticlanguages, English is about the
(25:38):
worst for sound -lettermappings. And it takes
English-speaking children thelongest to figure it out,
compared to French, Italian,German, Greek, alphabetic
languages. It takes Englishspeakers a very long time,
(25:58):
compared to other languages, todo this. Now, this is how we
know kids are readingdifferently. If I grab a first
grade child in Italy, and Igive them a nonsense word like
something they don't know whatit is, like blickit, and I ask
them to read it. They'll readit by the end of grade one or
(26:24):
two. Most Italian and Spanishand Greek kids can do it , no
problem. It takesEnglish-speaking kids to be in
grade five before they'rethere. It takes a long time. I
mean, of course they can dosomething, but really to get to
a level of high proficiency ittakes many years, because words
(26:44):
like neighbor, night , theywill throw you off. And so it
takes you a long time to learndifferent patterns. And be
trustful of the patterns yousee. We know that when Italian
folks read these nonwords, theyactivate parts of the brain
that are close to our hearingparts of the brain. It's in the
temporal lobe , right whereyour ear is. It's easy. Letters
(27:07):
have sounds. Sounds haveletters. Piece of cake. English
speakers, when they're facedwith this problem of reading a
word they've never seen before,and that they took longer to
figure out how to do, willactivate the frontal lobe,
that's where your eyebrows areat. This is a hard problem. The
frontal lobe is our heavy-dutythinking part of the brain.
(27:31):
It's a hard problem. It turnsout, when you look at children
who are bilingual in language,such as Spanish and English,
you get the same difference.
When they're doing aphonological reading task in
Spanish, they have what'scalled functional connectivity,
the way parts of the brain playwith each other. So this
happens for them in thetemporal lobe, where the ear is
(27:51):
at, which is what happens tomonolingual Italians. And then
if you look at the English inthe same child, it's the
frontal lobe, it's where youreyebrows are at . That's what
we find for monolingual. It'sone child, but they have two
languages, and they have twosystems. So that is important.
(28:14):
The bilingual child canactually develop two systems,
depending on what theirlanguage demands. The second
thing that happens is thatproficiency. People think, "Oh,
phonology is easy." Blickit,you don't know what blickit is,
but you can tell how manysyllables are in the word
blickit. Two, piece of cake.
You don't know, it could havebeen a Russian word. You don't
know. But you can segment it.
(28:35):
It's a universal skill . Itshould transfer between one
language to the other language.
In theory. It turns out thateven though the same parts of
the brain are active, if you donot have systematic instruction
in that language, it doesn'tdevelop as well. So we look at
children, we'll call themheritage-language speakers.
(28:56):
This means they're learning toread in English, but at home
they speak a differentlanguage. In the state of
Michigan, we don't havebilingual schools. They go to
school in English. Their momand dad might be teaching them
how to read in Spanish, and howto read in Chinese or Russian,
but they're not getting as muchinstruction. And we see
differences. We take the samephonological task, we give them
(29:17):
the word blickit, they break itinto syllables. Piece of cake.
Seems to be really easy. Shouldtransfer easily. No. If the
child didn't have instructionin that language, we see not
just the left and the rightactivate, it's all active
because it's a hard task.
They're not used to segmentingwords into sounds in that
language, because they don'thave formal literacy
(29:39):
instruction. So people say,"Oh, piece of cake, I'm gonna
learn this in Spanish andtransfer into English." A
little, yes but you still needinstruction in that language.
Some of it transfers, but thatby itself is not enough. Yes,
children can learn to read inmultiple languages. Yes, their
brain can configure for thesedifferent languages. And no, it
(30:01):
doesn't transfer magically in away that doesn't require
instruction in the otherlanguage. You need to become a
bilingual reader. You have tohave bilingual literacy
instruction.
Susan Lambert (30:14):
So no matter what language, you need
explicit instruction in thatlanguage?
Ioulia Kovelman (30:18):
You need explicit instruction. And if
you do, then miracles begin tohappen. We have looked at
children who areheritage-language speakers. And
when you compare two children,and we're no longer talking
about dyslexia, we have thesame two nine-year-olds.
They're both bilingualChinese-English speakers, or
(30:41):
Spanish-English speakers. Andthey know the same number of
words in English. And they canread the same number of words
in English. And they lookindistinguishable. But one
child has a little bit ofChinese, or a little bit of
Spanish, and the other childhas a lot. The child who has a
lot, I'm gonna look at theirbrain, and I'm gonna look at
how their brain reacts tolanguage. Even though they're
(31:04):
matched for English, the childwho knows their home language
better, their brain systems aremore mature for language.
They're better developed forlanguage. So there's addition,
right? So we talk abouttransfer. Of course knowing a
little bit in one language willhelp you with the other
language, clearly, right?
Susan Lambert (31:21):
Yep. Yep .
Ioulia Kovelman (31:22):
It's like in sports, if you know how to
throw a ball, you'll know howto do other physical
activities. The brain is thesame way. Skills will transfer,
but it'll also strengthen you.
In the state of Michigan,Michael Phelps was our star
swimmer. But then, how do youbecome a good swimmer? Do you
swim all day? Or do you alsotake a break to do some jogging
(31:45):
and weight lifting ? We call itCrossFit these days. You want
your body to be strong. And solanguages are like that. We
talked about languages beingdifferent. They're exercising
slightly different muscles ofyour language system. Isn't
that cool?
Susan Lambert (31:58):
That is very cool.
Ioulia Kovelman (31:59):
So a bilingual person has an exercise in
language. They have an exercisein different elements of that
language. Hmm . It's like thethings that are not very
obvious in English, maybe aremore obvious in Spanish. Maybe
more obvious in Chinese. Andthen they have to resolve
conflicts in language. I say itthis way in one language, but a
(32:21):
different way in the otherlanguage. So their brain has to
resolve all these things. Soit's an exercise. Good
physiotherapy for your brain .
Susan Lambert (32:28):
That is so fascinating. I'd love for you
to just tell us just a littlebit about your lab, the
Language and Literacy Lab.
Because you do a lot of thiswork, and do a lot of this
study right there in thatLanguage and Literacy Lab.
Correct?
Ioulia Kovelman (32:41):
Yes.
Susan Lambert (32:42):
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Ioulia Kovelman (32:44):
We welcome children. We usually look at
elementary school children. Welook at average readers. We
look at struggling readers. Welook at folks who struggle with
language. These are calledlanguage-based learning
differences. And we look atkids who speak English at home,
(33:09):
or they speak Chinese at home,and they speak Spanish at home
as well as English. And we takethe reading process, and we
break it down. Same things thatthe teachers are asking. How do
they learn how to read words?
How do they learn to readsentences? How do they learn to
read stories? That's what wedo. We have the kids come in,
(33:33):
and we have them do wordreading exercises, or sentence
understanding exercises, ortext exercises in addition to
what people typically do atschool. We also put
neuroimaging equipment aroundtheir heads. We use optical
brain imaging. That's the kindof equipment that's in your
Fitbit or your Apple Watch,whatever is in your smartwatch.
(33:55):
If folks have one on and theytake it off, you'll see a light
in it. There's a flashing lightinside. That light detects
changes in the color of yourblood. That's how these gizmos
know your heart rate. They'recalled pulse oximeters, that's
the fancy word in the hospital,but these are embedded in your
smartwatches, and they tell youthe changes in the color of
(34:16):
your blood. Now, yoursmartwatch usually has just one
of these lights. We put a wholebunch of them into a cap and
put it on the kid's head. Nowwe're watching the whole head.
Susan Lambert (34:25):
Wow.
Ioulia Kovelman (34:25):
When you put this around the head, it's
telling us changes in the brainfunction. Because parts of the
brain, when they get busy doingword reading exercises, they
need more oxygen, and thatchanges the drawing of the
oxygen, changes the color ofthe blood. We measure that
(34:46):
difference. That's how we knowhow a child's brain works while
they're basically wearing thisgiant Fitbit around their
heads.
Susan Lambert (34:53):
And we'll put a link in the show notes for our
listeners, because you actuallyhave a video of that on the
website that you can go and seewhat this thing looks like.
It's fascinating!
Ioulia Kovelman (35:03):
Well, thank you. We also think this is
really cool. It's a very simplemethod. We're just measuring
changes in light. We use lightto do it, we made changes in
color. And everybody's wearingone of these these days. And we
just have a lot of themembedded into like a little
(35:23):
band. And the band goes aroundthe kids' heads, and then they
go on and they do what they'dusually do in the classroom,
but then we watch how theirbrain functions.
Susan Lambert (35:31):
That's cool. Do you explain to the kids what's
happening when you're puttingthis thing on?
Ioulia Kovelman (35:36):
Yes, we do. Of course. We show them. If they
are interested, they can see onthe screen how the signal goes
when they do things. We showthis to the parents.
Susan Lambert (35:49):
Wow, that's so cool. They must just feel like
they're doing something reallyimportant when they're there.
Ioulia Kovelman (35:55):
I hope so. We tell them they're helping new
brain scientists. They'rehelping teachers. And they're
helping students. And they'rehelping kids who struggle. And,
of course, they're informingscience. They get the merits of
being scientists. It'sterrific! I'm a parent to , and
I have small children, and Ihave groceries, and dirty
(36:16):
dishes, and all the things youhave to do on your weekend or
after work. And so, I'm in aweand infinitely grateful for
every parent who takes twohours of their time to come and
support research. Kids getgifts, and we compensate
people, but I don't think thatreally is truly compensating
(36:40):
people for what they do.
Susan Lambert (36:41):
Yeah.
Ioulia Kovelman (36:42):
And just a shoutout to everybody who has
ever participated in a researchstudy. 'Cause that's a huge
service to all of us.
Susan Lambert (36:49):
Yeah, for sure.
A quick question about that.
What you do in your lab, andwhat you're finding out, there
isn't always a directconnection to what teachers
should be doing in theclassroom, right? What kind of
steps have to happen nextbefore it's like, "Oh, we know
this thing, and teachers here'ssome guidance for maybe how you
can impact your instruction?"
Ioulia Kovelman (37:10):
Correct.
Correct. And I want people tothink about medicine. The
chemist goes into a lab andsynthesizes something. And then
goes over to a biologist andsays, "Hey, can we try this on
a mouse model?" So, beforehuman trials, we do something
in a Petri dish, something inan animal, and then we have
(37:33):
human volunteers come in andtry it out. We usually think
there's about 15 years betweenresearch. And that's when we
think we have the drug. Now ,mind years of discovery and
work with the Petri dishes .
But once the chemists and thebiologists have agreed, where
(37:55):
the science team says, "OK, wethink this is the drug," This
is when they connect withmedical professionals and do
clinical trials. We thinkthere's a decade that goes by
between all of these trials andactual implementation, when
your doctor will prescribe itto you, or it's a new surgical
procedure, and whatnot. So youhave to think about this in
(38:17):
similar terms. There's alinguist, maybe there's a
cognitive scientist. And again,something in their Petri dish
comes up and they say, "Hey,let's go talk to a teacher and
see if that makes sense tothem." And again, it might be
an education scientist, and sothat education scientist could
say, "Well, we have thisliteracy approach, we have that
(38:38):
literacy approach, but this issomething new, and maybe this
will work better than this orthat." And then it goes into,
"Well, let's approach thisprincipal and try it out in one
classroom. And then you go toschool in a district.
Unfortunately, these are notfast, because there are are the
steps. But then you wouldn'twanna be poisoned with the
(38:59):
drug. In the same way, you donot wanna be misled. Because
once something's implemented,it's implemented. The teachers
are trained, the textbooks arepublished, the school districts
are subscribed to it. And thenif it's wrong, as some people
know, sometimes we have donethings that are wrong, and then
it takes another decade toundo.
Susan Lambert (39:21):
That's a great point. It's a really good
point. I think we talk a lotabout the preponderance of
evidence. That's what you weretalking about is different
types of evidence, and fromdifferent points of view. And
science is slow moving. Ittakes time. We have to
sometimes be patient with it.
But we're not always patientpeople, are we?
Ioulia Kovelman (39:42):
Well, you have just seen with COVID sometimes
emergencies happen and wereally put in a huge effort.
You have seen this was aworldwide effort. Really not a
singular country. Not asingular land. This was a
worldwide effort, where peoplecame together. What if we have
a literacy crisis? And we do inmany places.In the state of
(40:04):
Michigan, we have some of thelowest reading scores in the
country. So what if we calledit a crisis and said, "look,
just like COVID, we have tohave something and we have to
have it in a year and not in 12years." And throw the same
kinds of money as we threw atCOVID.
Susan Lambert (40:25):
Well, as we're wrapping up, do you have any
final thoughts for ourlisteners? Anything that you
want educators to really takeaway from this conversation?
Words of wisdom?
Ioulia Kovelman (40:34):
Oh, not at all. Science is informed by
teachers and children, as Ijust gave you an example, that
cool aerobics lady, right ?
This is what teachers see inthe classroom. This is what
therapist see in theirsessions, us in their brain
science. We could be looking atthis like staring at the stars
forever. So there needs to be adialogue. It's
(40:57):
interdisciplinary. It has to bea child, parent, teacher ,
researchers, at multiplelevels, because it's a loop.
We're all together. And I donot teach children, and
teachers don't usually doscience, but we have to find
ways of connecting with eachother.
Susan Lambert (41:15):
That's great.
Well, Ioulia, it's been such apleasure. We can't wait to have
you back and to do some deepdives into some more things
that you're doing. Thanks forthe work that you do, and
thanks for being willing tochat with us. And I will
encourage our listeners to goto the links in the show notes
so they can check out your lab.
Ioulia Kovelman (41:31):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Susan Lambert (41:36):
That was Ioulia Kovelman, professor of
psychology at the University ofMichigan. Check out the show
notes for links to learn muchmore about the exciting work at
the Language and Literacy Lab.
We also have a link to ourrecent mini series , exploring
how the Science of Readingserves multilingual and English
learners. Remember to submityour own literacy questions by
(42:00):
visitingamplify.com/sormailbag. Your
question could be answered onthe show. And by submitting a
question, you could also win avisit from me to your school.
Next time on the show, we'llhear from 2024 National Teacher
of the Year, Missy Testerman, alongtime first and second grade
(42:21):
teacher who decided to get herESL endorsement at 51 years
old.
Missy Testerman (42:25):
Anytime someone gets moved in a school
setting, you'll hear that, "Arethey making you move?" Or,
"They're making you go to ESL?"And so I think some people were
thinking that they made hermove. No one made me move. I
signed up. I willingly wantedto make this move, because I
wanted to make sure thesefamilies, these precious
(42:47):
students, had someone to betheir advocate.
Susan Lambert (42:51):
That's next time. The best way to get new
episodes is to subscribe toScience of Reading: The
Podcast, wherever you get yourpodcasts. And while you're
there, please leave us a ratingand review. We'd also
appreciate it if you shared ourreading reboot with some
friends and colleagues. You canjoin the conversation about
this episode in our Facebookdiscussion group, Science of
Reading (43:13):
The Community. Science of Reading
brought to you by Amplify. I'mSusan Lambert. Thank you so
much for listening.
The use of neuroimaging allows us to, for
instance, compare children whomight actually have the same
reading abilities, but may havevery different strategies for
reading.
Susan Lambert (00:15):
This is Susan Lambert, and welcome to Science
of Reading (00:18):
The Podcast from Amplify . How might recent
advances in neuroscience andcognitive psychology reshape
our understanding of dyslexiaand other reading disabilities?
That fantastic question, fromour listener mailbag, will be
answered on today's episode,with developmental cognitive
(00:39):
neuroscientist Ioulia Kovelman.
Dr. Kovelman is a professor ofpsychology at the University of
Michigan, and the director ofthe Language & Literacy Lab.
And she's joining us duringthis season-long reading reboot
to explore how developmentalcognitive neuroscience can
support the work of teachersand educators in literacy
(01:00):
development. Let's get to theconversation. Well, Dr . Ioulia
Kovelman, it's so great to haveyou on today's episode. I think
you said it's OK if I call youIoulia, is that right?
Ioulia Kovelman (01:13):
Yes, of course. Please do.
Susan Lambert (01:14):
Well, we would love if you could introduce
yourself to our listeners, andjust say a little bit about
your background, and what youdo.
Ioulia Kovelman (01:20):
Hello everyone. Thank you so much for
joining us today. My name isIoulia Kovelman. I am a faculty
at the University of Michigan.
I study how children learn toread, especially children who
are multilingual and speak morethan one language. As you can
hear in my accent, I am also animmigrant in the United States.
(01:46):
Russian is my native language.
I have traversed multiplecountries and spaces and
languages, and have lived inimmigrant and refugee spaces.
So I understand the challengesthat children face when they
are in a new space, in a newschool, and faced with a new
(02:07):
language. And among them arechildren with learning
differences. We wanna do thebest for our kids. This is what
I do. This is what our labstudies.
Susan Lambert (02:18):
That's awesome.
And we'll talk a little bitmore about your lab later, but
I think you are officially adevelopmental cognitive
neuroscience scientist. Is thatright?
Ioulia Kovelman (02:28):
That is correct. I'm a developmental
cognitive neuroscientist.
Susan Lambert (02:32):
What exactly do they do, or do you do? And
maybe even, particularly, whyshould educators care about
what you do?
Ioulia Kovelman (02:40):
Of course. So we are scientists. We're
researchers who study theintersection between children's
cognitive development andchildren's brain development.
We think they have something todo with each other. And about
20 years ago, you could studychildren's cognitive
(03:02):
development, but you couldn'treally study children's brain
development, because our brainimaging methods were not child
friendly. So the only way wewould do it is on animal
models. But , mice don't go toschool
cats. So, as brain imagingmethods have improved and
became more child friendly, wenow have this new and exciting
(03:24):
discipline. Again, it's nowbeen probably around 20 years,
but we're still excited aboutit, that we can now study
children's brain developmentand cognitive development
together. The reason we thinkeducators should care about
this is because, first of all,this is science. And science is
important. All kinds ofsciences are important. We have
(03:45):
been teaching children sincethe beginning of humanity. We
have also been trying to treatand remedy each other since the
beginning of humanity. At thesame time, we no longer use
like bloodletting and leechesto treat disease. And neither
do we ask children to memorizeverbatim chunks of Homer as
(04:07):
part of our education system.
We have made great progress,and part of that is scientific
development. Research isimportant in informing how we
approach anything, fromtreating cancer to helping
children learn how to read.
Both are equally as important.
The use of neuroimaging allowsus to, for instance, compare
(04:28):
children who might actuallyhave the same reading
abilities, but may have verydifferent strategies for
reading. And so it's hard tocapture when you're just
looking at how children read.
When you look at how the brainworks, you gain an additional
insight into how this childreads a word compared to
(04:48):
another child. And that givesus insights into both typical
and atypical reading, as wellas reading strategies that
might be more individualizedand better tailored to an
individual learner.
Susan Lambert (05:03):
So can I ask a super basic question? And I'm
hoping you can help us withthis. You talk about the
differences between cognitivescience and neuroscience. And I
think I have this right, buthelp me if I'm wrong. Cognitive
scientists really study themind, and neuroscientists study
(05:24):
the brain. If you were tryingto explain the differences
between the mind and the brain,or cognitive science and
neuroscience, how would you dothat? How would you explain
those differences?
Ioulia Kovelman (05:36):
I am a developmental cognitive
neuroscientist. So, I studymind and brain together. If you
just study the brain, then youwould be interested in, for
instance, how parts of thebrain that support memory
develop. So hippocampus, right?
So, I would be using mousemodels. I might teach the mice
(05:58):
something. I may then euthanizethe mice, and look at their
brains, and see how that brainchanged. Or slice the brain
into pieces, and put it in aPetri dish, and look at it.
There are neuroscientists whostudy Alzheimer's disease,
right? You cannot diagnoseAlzheimer's until somebody is
dead. And then you take theirbrain, and you slice it into
(06:20):
pieces, you put it into Petridishes, and you analyze the
tissue. That's pureneuroscience. When the brain
has been disconnected from theperson, and it's in a Petri
dish, that's pure neuroscience.
Susan Lambert (06:33):
Yikes,
Ioulia Kovelman (06:34):
And cognitive neuroscientists like to look at
living children, and howthey're thinking, and how their
brain works when they'rethinking. We don't just look at
the brain in a Petri dish, ifyou will. We look at it
together with the person.
Susan Lambert (06:50):
That's exciting, helpful, and makes me feel a
little bit better about thework that you do. Super
interesting. And thanks fortaking that little side step .
Related to reading developmentthen, how does the brain change
when children are learning howto read?
Ioulia Kovelman (07:09):
There are two major changes. One is that
parts of the brain that supportspeaking connect, or connect in
different ways, to the parts ofthe brain that support visual
object recognition. All of usrecognize a stop sign, right?
(07:31):
You don't have to know the wordstop. It kind of looks
universal, right? You recognizethe sign, you know what it
means, and all of a sudden youactually take these symbols,
and they're not connected toentire concepts, but actually
individual sounds, right? Catis made of C-A-T, and you've
learned these letters, and nowyou need to connect them to the
sounds. And then you actuallymemorize the entire form cat.
(07:54):
And cat doesn't look like dog.
Because for proficient readers,when we see a word, we do it
really quickly. We don'tanalyze it, right? Because this
is immediate recognitio. So thebrain changes, it really
changes. Because when you beginto read, you really have to
analyze everything in front ofyou. The letter, the shape of
(08:15):
the letter, how it connects tothe sound. And proficient
readers just look at the wholething, and they grab it, and
it's like they heard it. It'salmost no difference. I speak,
I read, it's a continuousstream of language. And I just
grab it. And so that's a bigneurological change. You have
connected the parts of thebrain that recognize visual
information, visual symbols, tothe parts of the brain that
(08:38):
process language as you hearit. And the second big change
is the fine-tuning of thelanguage system.
Susan Lambert (08:46):
Oh , tell me more.
Ioulia Kovelman (08:47):
No adult goes around saying cat dog, and yet
that is exactly what you needto do in order to read. So you
all of a sudden become anexpert in your own language.
You fine-tune your language,your own language systems. All
(09:12):
of us become linguists, right?
Even though we don't have a PhDin linguistics, but all of us
who learn how to read gain alot of insights into what words
are made of and what sentencesare made of. And the better we
do it, the better readers weare. So we are fine-tuning our
own language system. The brainchanges. If your mind changes,
(09:37):
your brain changes as well. Sothere's two big things that are
happening. One of them is thatyou've connected speech to
vision. And second, you havefine-tuned your language, and
you've connected it toattention and memory. That
entire circuit of capabilitiesbecomes specialized. You become
(09:59):
a specialist, right? You startas a beginning shoemaker, and
you come out as an expertshoemaker. But here, you begin
speaking, and then you come outas an expert user of language.
Susan Lambert (10:09):
For kids that really struggle to develop, can
you actually follow that, theway the brain works and looks
differently? In terms of whatyou're looking at? In terms of
the brain imaging?
Ioulia Kovelman (10:22):
Correct, correct. This is when we
started the discussion on whywe use neuroimaging. What
additional information does itgive you? That's exactly where
we're at. In our lab, and manyother labs we look at, we bring
two groups of children. Onegroup of children is seven,
they're happy-go-lucky. Theyare learning to read, and they
(10:45):
are what we call at gradelevel. And then we'll bring a
group of nine-year-oldchildren. They have a history
of dyslexia, but they read likethe seven-year-olds. If I had a
blindfold on, and didn't seethe child's age, and I just ask
them to read the words, theseven-year-old and the
(11:06):
nine-year-old will beidentical. Now, we're gonna use
brain imaging, and we're gonnalook at what are the
differences between theseven-year-old who is
happy-go-lucky, they loveschool, they love to read, and
a nine-year-old who is astruggling reader. And then I
(11:27):
might have two nine-year-olds.
I might have a nine-year-oldwho was just diagnosed, and is
gonna go into therapy. I mighthave a nine-year-old who maybe
their older brother haddyslexia, and the parents were
already aware, so they got themtested early. And this
nine-year-old has already hadtherapy. What's the difference?
So, I can get kids who readidentically, they're gonna read
(11:49):
the same number of words, theyrecognize the same kinds of
words, and yet we're expectingdifferences in how they process
them . The concept ofneurodiversity is profound. We
are different learners. Andthese are really different
learners. And by giving themliteracy instruction, targeted
(12:13):
literacy instruction, we arechanging their brains. But that
doesn't mean we are making themthe same as the happy-go-lucky
seven-year-old who is nothaving any difficulties and
enjoys learning how to read. Weas teachers would say we are
helping them developcompensatory or alternative
strategies. These are thestrategies that an average
(12:35):
reader may not require. But weare helping their mind to
develop these strategies. Andwe're helping their brain
rewire to be a reader. Childrenwith dyslexia can be readers.
Here, on the University ofMichigan campus, we have
students with dyslexia. Andthey have done so well that
(12:57):
they are students here at theUniversity of Michigan. And on
many campuses around the world,we have students who have
struggled. And I've talked tothese students, but they're
reading. They're reading justlike their classmates. They're
getting through the textbooks.
They're doing so different. Weknow this, and that's what
brain imaging gives us.
Susan Lambert (13:17):
Is there an easy way to share an example of what
it might physically look likedifferent? I know this is a
podcast and we're talking, sowe can't show any images, but
if you're looking at the brainthat is, let's say, typically
developing.
Ioulia Kovelman (13:36):
Average. What an average group does and
variation, right?
Susan Lambert (13:40):
Thank you for that. We'll talk about that.
And if we were looking at anaverage development of a brain,
how does it physically lookdifferent from kids that maybe
have more neurodiversity?
Ioulia Kovelman (13:53):
So there's really nice work by my
colleagues in Boston and
children before and after theyhad begun to read, and looked
at a group of children whoseemed at risk. They were
(14:15):
kindergartners, or pre-readers.
They tested them and then therewere follow-ups. When you know
these children in grade two arenot doing well in terms of
learning, they're able to goback and look at how brains
looked before they even startedlearning to read. And some of
these kids seem to be doingbetter than others in that
(14:35):
group. What they're seeing isthat the kids with reading
difficulties but who seem to bedoing better than other
children with readingdifficulties, have better
support systems in their righthemisphere. We have two
hemispheres, right and left. Wetypically think of the left
hemisphere of being ourlanguage hemisphere, and we
(14:58):
typically think of our righthemisphere as doing other
lovely things, visual-spatialprocessing, etc. There's a job
for everything in the brain
point that neurodiversity isabout us being different. And
some of us just don't have thesame left hemispheres, the
average left hemispheres. Butyou still have to go to school,
(15:21):
and learn how to read. So itseems like the stronger your
right hemisphere is, the betterit's able to catch that job,
and help you do that job that,for whatever reason, your left
hemisphere is not doing a goodjob supporting. That's really
the macro level, the largelevel of thinking about this.
(15:44):
Those of us who are in thefield of monitoring this
exciting work in ourlaboratory, we look at how
children read words for meaningand sound. And it looks like
children with dyslexia engagemeaning more. So the parts of
(16:05):
the brain circuits that processword meaning more so than the
average readers. The averagereaders have heavier reliance
on sound. How does the wordsound? Oh, I know what the word
is. And so, there's a stronggrab onto the meaning, and
meaningful parts of words, thathelps them think about that. We
(16:25):
start with that. Like, whatchanges when you learn how to
read? You become betterthinking about language. And it
seems like children who havedyslexia have real difficulty
thinking about the sounds ofthe words, which is really
important if you wanna mapsounds onto letters.
Compensatory mechanisms ,different parts of the brain,
different cognitive strategies.
(16:48):
You have to get there.
Susan Lambert (16:49):
You know, that's a really good segue, because we
have a question from ourlistener mailbag from Miracle
Foster, who's a teacher inMichigan, who asks, "How might
recent advances in neuroscienceand cognitive psychology
reshape our understanding ofdyslexia and other reading
disabilities? And whatimplications could these
(17:12):
developments have for creatingmore effective and personalized
teaching strategies?"
Ioulia Kovelman (17:18):
That is a very good one! Yes, that's perfect.
That is exactly where the fieldis at. We can ask the entire
field. The field is big, andeverybody follows their own
personal interests for onereason or another. Our
laboratory has been focused onwords. And we talk about sounds
(17:41):
and meanings. Between soundsand meanings are lexical
morphemes. Lexical morphemesare the smallest units of sound
that have meaning. So a cat .
That's it. It has a meaning.
Cut doesn't, but cat does. Andsometimes you can say snow. So
(18:04):
snow. But now we have snowman.
It's one word, but it's madeout of two lexical morphemes,
snow and man. Or the word undo, un and do are two different
(18:25):
elements, but each of them is amorpheme. So there's lexical
morphemes. We have known thatsounds and thinking about
sounds is difficult forchildren with dyslexia. You
take a word dog, you need toknow that it's do all good. You
need to think about the sounds.
And then you map sounds ontoletters. And that's what
children with dyslexia, atleast initially, find really
(18:46):
difficult. And as we talkedabout, the children with
dyslexia seem to be learningwords more or less OK. They're
learning words , cats and dogs,and they can talk and have a
conversation. Great. Butmorphemes are in between.
They're neither sounds norentire words. This is sort of
like this in-between piece. Andsome have said, "Well, it
(19:08):
should be part of theimpairment, because children
with dyslexia should havedifficulties breaking words
into pieces and then mappingthese pieces onto orthography
." And others have said, "No,this should be a strength,
because these pieces havemeaning, and meaning seems to
be good." So maybe that'sactually a strength, and we
(19:28):
should capitalize on that. Andso that's what we've been
looking at in our lab for sometime. And we are really excited
to see that it is a strength.
There's a lot of discussionabout deficits, right? This is
wrong, and that is wrong. Thestruggle here, and the struggle
there. Well, we are reallyexcited that these elements of
(19:50):
meaning are good and they'refunctioning. They're resilient.
I used the word good , butthey're resilient. So now,
we're going to teachingstrategies. We just talked that
when I ask children withdyslexia to work with a word,
such as snowman, they're fine.
They're doing really well. Andso, we are thinking that this
(20:11):
should have direct implicationsfor teaching instruction. You
have a student, and they'restruggling in breaking words
into sounds, and mapping theminto letters, but teach them
how to break words into biggerchunks. Bigger chunks. Un and
do, these are bigger chunks ofundo. And if they know how to
(20:32):
do it well, now they can grabonto the units of meaning and
the units of sound, and alsoorthography. Think about the
words magic and magician. Theydon't sound the same, but they
are spelled the same, becauseyou've grabbed onto these
pieces. And not all morphemesare made the same. Some of
(20:55):
them, like snowman, snow, andman, each have a meaning. And
words like unlikely. Like has ameaning, but un won't stand on
its own, and ly won't stand onits own. So kids with dyslexia
also have difficulty with that.
And we think of that asgrammar. Often we don't think
about that as sounds. But it'skind of grammatical, because
(21:19):
it's so abstract. And we don'talways teach it even to average
children. We don't usually havesystematic construction in
morphology. We think, "Oh,well, they speak English, they
can speak it . They know it."Well, some of them are smart
enough and they'll figure itout with enough experience. But
even an average reader doesbetter when you teach them,
(21:42):
explicitly, this is what thisis, this is how it is put
together. Here's the un andhere's how it works in English.
And if you put them to a verb,now you've undone it. You've
uninvited somebody. So it'simportant. And kids with
dyslexia struggle with that.
And again, we're back toinstruction now. You have to
(22:04):
help them with that. We seethat the kinds of circuits,
brain circuits, that do notwork well for sound are the
same circuits that do not workwell for these abstract
morphemes, like on , on and raw. And I was visiting UT Dallas
just the other week, and I metwith a colleague, Dr. Julia
(22:28):
Evans, and we had this exactconversation. She is also a
speech therapist. And she said,"Oh, this makes perfect sense.
I was working with a child, whohas a language problem, and I
was showing them pictures. Igive you a word, and you give
me a new word. I give you aword, teach, and you give me a
(22:48):
word, teacher. I give you aword, paint, and you give me a
word, painter. I give you aword jog, and then the child
says, "Cool aerobics lady.""
Susan Lambert (23:01):
Ioulia Kovelman (23:04):
Right, this is what we're talking about. When
a child with language orreading problems quickly put
together a word made out ofwords, they can make words .
They're not stupid. They'resmart. All children are smart.
They can make new words. But,you were expecting jogger, a
grammatical form. Instead, yougot a cool aerobics lady ,
(23:27):
which is what we call acompound word . So there's a
strength, and there's adeficit. And now you know where
you have something that'sresilient, and something that's
fragile and you have to helpthem .
Susan Lambert (23:41):
That's a great example.
Ioulia Kovelman (23:42):
That's from a therapy session, to brain
imaging, to intervention. 1, 2,3.
Susan Lambert (23:48):
We'll look at that. Shoutout to Miracle for
such a great question. Thankyou so much for that. And our
listeners can submit otherliteracy questions too . We're
excited about other ones wemight get. Let's make a little
bit of a shift from thedifferences between typically
developing kids andneurodiverse to the brains of
(24:10):
monolingual and bilingualchildren. Because that's also a
hot topic too. Are theredifferences there that we
should know about?
Ioulia Kovelman (24:17):
There are, and there are very interesting. And
for good reasons. There aredifferences between languages.
And that's just how we roll .
We do not inherit language fromour parents. It's a good thing,
because then we can make newwords. Look, we've got iPhones,
and we've got all sorts of coolstuff, and we can come up with
(24:39):
new words, morphology, right?
So we make all this new stuff,like cool aerobics ladies . But
the other part of it is that wehave different languages. We
didn't inherit language fromour parents. We only inherited
the ability to have language.
So language is a difference,and because language is
different, orthography is adifference. There is a link
between language andorthography , and maybe that's
(25:00):
for a different conversation.
But the end result is that inSpanish, when you hear gato,
you are going to spell gato. InEnglish, when you hear
neighbor, I don't know whatyou're gonna spell. I cannot
even spell it out. I'm sorry.
Susan Lambert (25:13):
< Laugh > .
Ioulia Kovelman (25:14):
And I feel very sorry for all the English
speakers who have to deal withthis every single day. In fact,
of all the alphabeticlanguages, English is about the
(25:38):
worst for sound -lettermappings. And it takes
English-speaking children thelongest to figure it out,
compared to French, Italian,German, Greek, alphabetic
languages. It takes Englishspeakers a very long time,
(25:58):
compared to other languages, todo this. Now, this is how we
know kids are readingdifferently. If I grab a first
grade child in Italy, and Igive them a nonsense word like
something they don't know whatit is, like blickit, and I ask
them to read it. They'll readit by the end of grade one or
(26:24):
two. Most Italian and Spanishand Greek kids can do it , no
problem. It takesEnglish-speaking kids to be in
grade five before they'rethere. It takes a long time. I
mean, of course they can dosomething, but really to get to
a level of high proficiency ittakes many years, because words
(26:44):
like neighbor, night , theywill throw you off. And so it
takes you a long time to learndifferent patterns. And be
trustful of the patterns yousee. We know that when Italian
folks read these nonwords, theyactivate parts of the brain
that are close to our hearingparts of the brain. It's in the
temporal lobe , right whereyour ear is. It's easy. Letters
(27:07):
have sounds. Sounds haveletters. Piece of cake. English
speakers, when they're facedwith this problem of reading a
word they've never seen before,and that they took longer to
figure out how to do, willactivate the frontal lobe,
that's where your eyebrows areat. This is a hard problem. The
frontal lobe is our heavy-dutythinking part of the brain.
(27:31):
It's a hard problem. It turnsout, when you look at children
who are bilingual in language,such as Spanish and English,
you get the same difference.
When they're doing aphonological reading task in
Spanish, they have what'scalled functional connectivity,
the way parts of the brain playwith each other. So this
happens for them in thetemporal lobe, where the ear is
(27:51):
at, which is what happens tomonolingual Italians. And then
if you look at the English inthe same child, it's the
frontal lobe, it's where youreyebrows are at . That's what
we find for monolingual. It'sone child, but they have two
languages, and they have twosystems. So that is important.
(28:14):
The bilingual child canactually develop two systems,
depending on what theirlanguage demands. The second
thing that happens is thatproficiency. People think, "Oh,
phonology is easy." Blickit,you don't know what blickit is,
but you can tell how manysyllables are in the word
blickit. Two, piece of cake.
You don't know, it could havebeen a Russian word. You don't
know. But you can segment it.
(28:35):
It's a universal skill . Itshould transfer between one
language to the other language.
In theory. It turns out thateven though the same parts of
the brain are active, if you donot have systematic instruction
in that language, it doesn'tdevelop as well. So we look at
children, we'll call themheritage-language speakers.
(28:56):
This means they're learning toread in English, but at home
they speak a differentlanguage. In the state of
Michigan, we don't havebilingual schools. They go to
school in English. Their momand dad might be teaching them
how to read in Spanish, and howto read in Chinese or Russian,
but they're not getting as muchinstruction. And we see
differences. We take the samephonological task, we give them
(29:17):
the word blickit, they break itinto syllables. Piece of cake.
Seems to be really easy. Shouldtransfer easily. No. If the
child didn't have instructionin that language, we see not
just the left and the rightactivate, it's all active
because it's a hard task.
They're not used to segmentingwords into sounds in that
language, because they don'thave formal literacy
(29:39):
instruction. So people say,"Oh, piece of cake, I'm gonna
learn this in Spanish andtransfer into English." A
little, yes but you still needinstruction in that language.
Some of it transfers, but thatby itself is not enough. Yes,
children can learn to read inmultiple languages. Yes, their
brain can configure for thesedifferent languages. And no, it
(30:01):
doesn't transfer magically in away that doesn't require
instruction in the otherlanguage. You need to become a
bilingual reader. You have tohave bilingual literacy
instruction.
Susan Lambert (30:14):
So no matter what language, you need
explicit instruction in thatlanguage?
Ioulia Kovelman (30:18):
You need explicit instruction. And if
you do, then miracles begin tohappen. We have looked at
children who areheritage-language speakers. And
when you compare two children,and we're no longer talking
about dyslexia, we have thesame two nine-year-olds.
They're both bilingualChinese-English speakers, or
(30:41):
Spanish-English speakers. Andthey know the same number of
words in English. And they canread the same number of words
in English. And they lookindistinguishable. But one
child has a little bit ofChinese, or a little bit of
Spanish, and the other childhas a lot. The child who has a
lot, I'm gonna look at theirbrain, and I'm gonna look at
how their brain reacts tolanguage. Even though they're
(31:04):
matched for English, the childwho knows their home language
better, their brain systems aremore mature for language.
They're better developed forlanguage. So there's addition,
right? So we talk abouttransfer. Of course knowing a
little bit in one language willhelp you with the other
language, clearly, right?
Susan Lambert (31:21):
Yep. Yep .
Ioulia Kovelman (31:22):
It's like in sports, if you know how to
throw a ball, you'll know howto do other physical
activities. The brain is thesame way. Skills will transfer,
but it'll also strengthen you.
In the state of Michigan,Michael Phelps was our star
swimmer. But then, how do youbecome a good swimmer? Do you
swim all day? Or do you alsotake a break to do some jogging
(31:45):
and weight lifting ? We call itCrossFit these days. You want
your body to be strong. And solanguages are like that. We
talked about languages beingdifferent. They're exercising
slightly different muscles ofyour language system. Isn't
that cool?
Susan Lambert (31:58):
That is very cool.
Ioulia Kovelman (31:59):
So a bilingual person has an exercise in
language. They have an exercisein different elements of that
language. Hmm . It's like thethings that are not very
obvious in English, maybe aremore obvious in Spanish. Maybe
more obvious in Chinese. Andthen they have to resolve
conflicts in language. I say itthis way in one language, but a
(32:21):
different way in the otherlanguage. So their brain has to
resolve all these things. Soit's an exercise. Good
physiotherapy for your brain .
Susan Lambert (32:28):
That is so fascinating. I'd love for you
to just tell us just a littlebit about your lab, the
Language and Literacy Lab.
Because you do a lot of thiswork, and do a lot of this
study right there in thatLanguage and Literacy Lab.
Correct?
Ioulia Kovelman (32:41):
Yes.
Susan Lambert (32:42):
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Ioulia Kovelman (32:44):
We welcome children. We usually look at
elementary school children. Welook at average readers. We
look at struggling readers. Welook at folks who struggle with
language. These are calledlanguage-based learning
differences. And we look atkids who speak English at home,
(33:09):
or they speak Chinese at home,and they speak Spanish at home
as well as English. And we takethe reading process, and we
break it down. Same things thatthe teachers are asking. How do
they learn how to read words?
How do they learn to readsentences? How do they learn to
read stories? That's what wedo. We have the kids come in,
(33:33):
and we have them do wordreading exercises, or sentence
understanding exercises, ortext exercises in addition to
what people typically do atschool. We also put
neuroimaging equipment aroundtheir heads. We use optical
brain imaging. That's the kindof equipment that's in your
Fitbit or your Apple Watch,whatever is in your smartwatch.
(33:55):
If folks have one on and theytake it off, you'll see a light
in it. There's a flashing lightinside. That light detects
changes in the color of yourblood. That's how these gizmos
know your heart rate. They'recalled pulse oximeters, that's
the fancy word in the hospital,but these are embedded in your
smartwatches, and they tell youthe changes in the color of
(34:16):
your blood. Now, yoursmartwatch usually has just one
of these lights. We put a wholebunch of them into a cap and
put it on the kid's head. Nowwe're watching the whole head.
Susan Lambert (34:25):
Wow.
Ioulia Kovelman (34:25):
When you put this around the head, it's
telling us changes in the brainfunction. Because parts of the
brain, when they get busy doingword reading exercises, they
need more oxygen, and thatchanges the drawing of the
oxygen, changes the color ofthe blood. We measure that
(34:46):
difference. That's how we knowhow a child's brain works while
they're basically wearing thisgiant Fitbit around their
heads.
Susan Lambert (34:53):
And we'll put a link in the show notes for our
listeners, because you actuallyhave a video of that on the
website that you can go and seewhat this thing looks like.
It's fascinating!
Ioulia Kovelman (35:03):
Well, thank you. We also think this is
really cool. It's a very simplemethod. We're just measuring
changes in light. We use lightto do it, we made changes in
color. And everybody's wearingone of these these days. And we
just have a lot of themembedded into like a little
(35:23):
band. And the band goes aroundthe kids' heads, and then they
go on and they do what they'dusually do in the classroom,
but then we watch how theirbrain functions.
Susan Lambert (35:31):
That's cool. Do you explain to the kids what's
happening when you're puttingthis thing on?
Ioulia Kovelman (35:36):
Yes, we do. Of course. We show them. If they
are interested, they can see onthe screen how the signal goes
when they do things. We showthis to the parents.
Susan Lambert (35:49):
Wow, that's so cool. They must just feel like
they're doing something reallyimportant when they're there.
Ioulia Kovelman (35:55):
I hope so. We tell them they're helping new
brain scientists. They'rehelping teachers. And they're
helping students. And they'rehelping kids who struggle. And,
of course, they're informingscience. They get the merits of
being scientists. It'sterrific! I'm a parent to , and
I have small children, and Ihave groceries, and dirty
(36:16):
dishes, and all the things youhave to do on your weekend or
after work. And so, I'm in aweand infinitely grateful for
every parent who takes twohours of their time to come and
support research. Kids getgifts, and we compensate
people, but I don't think thatreally is truly compensating
(36:40):
people for what they do.
Susan Lambert (36:41):
Yeah.
Ioulia Kovelman (36:42):
And just a shoutout to everybody who has
ever participated in a researchstudy. 'Cause that's a huge
service to all of us.
Susan Lambert (36:49):
Yeah, for sure.
A quick question about that.
What you do in your lab, andwhat you're finding out, there
isn't always a directconnection to what teachers
should be doing in theclassroom, right? What kind of
steps have to happen nextbefore it's like, "Oh, we know
this thing, and teachers here'ssome guidance for maybe how you
can impact your instruction?"
Ioulia Kovelman (37:10):
Correct.
Correct. And I want people tothink about medicine. The
chemist goes into a lab andsynthesizes something. And then
goes over to a biologist andsays, "Hey, can we try this on
a mouse model?" So, beforehuman trials, we do something
in a Petri dish, something inan animal, and then we have
(37:33):
human volunteers come in andtry it out. We usually think
there's about 15 years betweenresearch. And that's when we
think we have the drug. Now ,mind years of discovery and
work with the Petri dishes .
But once the chemists and thebiologists have agreed, where
(37:55):
the science team says, "OK, wethink this is the drug," This
is when they connect withmedical professionals and do
clinical trials. We thinkthere's a decade that goes by
between all of these trials andactual implementation, when
your doctor will prescribe itto you, or it's a new surgical
procedure, and whatnot. So youhave to think about this in
(38:17):
similar terms. There's alinguist, maybe there's a
cognitive scientist. And again,something in their Petri dish
comes up and they say, "Hey,let's go talk to a teacher and
see if that makes sense tothem." And again, it might be
an education scientist, and sothat education scientist could
say, "Well, we have thisliteracy approach, we have that
(38:38):
literacy approach, but this issomething new, and maybe this
will work better than this orthat." And then it goes into,
"Well, let's approach thisprincipal and try it out in one
classroom. And then you go toschool in a district.
Unfortunately, these are notfast, because there are are the
steps. But then you wouldn'twanna be poisoned with the
(38:59):
drug. In the same way, you donot wanna be misled. Because
once something's implemented,it's implemented. The teachers
are trained, the textbooks arepublished, the school districts
are subscribed to it. And thenif it's wrong, as some people
know, sometimes we have donethings that are wrong, and then
it takes another decade toundo.
Susan Lambert (39:21):
That's a great point. It's a really good
point. I think we talk a lotabout the preponderance of
evidence. That's what you weretalking about is different
types of evidence, and fromdifferent points of view. And
science is slow moving. Ittakes time. We have to
sometimes be patient with it.
But we're not always patientpeople, are we?
Ioulia Kovelman (39:42):
Well, you have just seen with COVID sometimes
emergencies happen and wereally put in a huge effort.
You have seen this was aworldwide effort. Really not a
singular country. Not asingular land. This was a
worldwide effort, where peoplecame together. What if we have
a literacy crisis? And we do inmany places.In the state of
(40:04):
Michigan, we have some of thelowest reading scores in the
country. So what if we calledit a crisis and said, "look,
just like COVID, we have tohave something and we have to
have it in a year and not in 12years." And throw the same
kinds of money as we threw atCOVID.
Susan Lambert (40:25):
Well, as we're wrapping up, do you have any
final thoughts for ourlisteners? Anything that you
want educators to really takeaway from this conversation?
Words of wisdom?
Ioulia Kovelman (40:34):
Oh, not at all. Science is informed by
teachers and children, as Ijust gave you an example, that
cool aerobics lady, right ?
This is what teachers see inthe classroom. This is what
therapist see in theirsessions, us in their brain
science. We could be looking atthis like staring at the stars
forever. So there needs to be adialogue. It's
(40:57):
interdisciplinary. It has to bea child, parent, teacher ,
researchers, at multiplelevels, because it's a loop.
We're all together. And I donot teach children, and
teachers don't usually doscience, but we have to find
ways of connecting with eachother.
Susan Lambert (41:15):
That's great.
Well, Ioulia, it's been such apleasure. We can't wait to have
you back and to do some deepdives into some more things
that you're doing. Thanks forthe work that you do, and
thanks for being willing tochat with us. And I will
encourage our listeners to goto the links in the show notes
so they can check out your lab.
Ioulia Kovelman (41:31):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.
Susan Lambert (41:36):
That was Ioulia Kovelman, professor of
psychology at the University ofMichigan. Check out the show
notes for links to learn muchmore about the exciting work at
the Language and Literacy Lab.
We also have a link to ourrecent mini series , exploring
how the Science of Readingserves multilingual and English
learners. Remember to submityour own literacy questions by
(42:00):
visitingamplify.com/sormailbag. Your
question could be answered onthe show. And by submitting a
question, you could also win avisit from me to your school.
Next time on the show, we'llhear from 2024 National Teacher
of the Year, Missy Testerman, alongtime first and second grade
(42:21):
teacher who decided to get herESL endorsement at 51 years
old.
Missy Testerman (42:25):
Anytime someone gets moved in a school
setting, you'll hear that, "Arethey making you move?" Or,
"They're making you go to ESL?"And so I think some people were
thinking that they made hermove. No one made me move. I
signed up. I willingly wantedto make this move, because I
wanted to make sure thesefamilies, these precious
(42:47):
students, had someone to betheir advocate.
Susan Lambert (42:51):
That's next time. The best way to get new
episodes is to subscribe toScience of Reading: The
Podcast, wherever you get yourpodcasts. And while you're
there, please leave us a ratingand review. We'd also
appreciate it if you shared ourreading reboot with some
friends and colleagues. You canjoin the conversation about
this episode in our Facebookdiscussion group, Science of
Reading (43:13):
The Community. Science of Reading
brought to you by Amplify. I'mSusan Lambert. Thank you so
much for listening.
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