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The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading 

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The Science of Reading Progresses: Communicating Advances Beyond the Simple View of Reading 

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At a glance

Learning to read requires certain executive function skills.

Kids with executive function challenges may struggle with reading.

They may confuse letters that look similar and have trouble sounding out words.

Executive function plays a big part in different aspects of learning to read. It's key to mastering the alphabet and understanding what words mean. When kids have weak executive function skills, it can create difficulties with reading. Here are five ways executive function challenges can affect reading.

1. Executive function and letter recognition

Kids with executive function challenges may confuse letters when they're learning the alphabet. That's because once they've learned something, it can be hard for them to leave it behind and adopt new rules.

Take the letters P and R. A child who learns P first may not recognize that R is similar, but has an extra stroke. The child may still reflexively see it as P. Focus also plays a role. Kids need to be able to sustain attention long enough in order to realize that an extra stroke turns a P into an R.

2. Executive function and sounding out words

New readers need to be able to sound out unfamiliar words letter by letter. That can be tricky for kids with executive function challenges. To decode a word, they have to keep the letter sounds from the beginning of a word in mind as they work through the rest of the word.

But trouble with working memory, a key executive function, makes it hard to hold on to that information. This can also impact overall understanding of a text. Kids may be so focused on decoding individual words that they lose track of the meaning of what they're reading.

3. Executive function and words with multiple meanings

Words that have the same sound and spelling but a different meaning can trip up even advanced readers. Kids have to use flexible thinking, another executive function skill, to understand how a word can be used in more than one way.

For example, if kids come across the phrase a fork in the road, they'll first consider the literal meaning. Then they'll decide if it makes sense based on the context. Is there really a fork in the road? Or does it mean something else in this case?

Thinking that way requires executive function skills. Kids who struggle with those skills can have a hard time putting aside the literal or most common meaning of words and thinking of an alternative.

They may have trouble using context clues, like other words and pictures in the text. Because of that, they may not understand what they've read. Or it may take them longer to get through the text than it takes most kids.

4. Executive function and passive voice

When kids first learn to read, most sentences are in the active voice. "Sophie pushed Kevin" is an example of active voice. Eventually sentences become more complicated. "Kevin was pushed by Sophie" means the same thing. But kids who have trouble with executive function may misinterpret the sentence to mean that Kevin pushed Sophie, rather than the other way around.

Understanding the correct meaning requires holding the idea of "Kevin" in their mind as they continue to read to find out who or what is doing the action. This places a greater demand on working memory. It takes them longer to read the sentence, and there's a greater chance they won't remember what happened correctly.

5. Executive function and focus

Learning anything new takes effort, and reading is no different. You have to sit still, pay attention, and ignore distractions. Kids with executive function challenges often struggle with focus. Trouble concentrating for a period of time can make it hard for kids to decode. It can also make it difficult to figure out the meaning of what they're reading.

Learning to read requires many skills. Kids with executive function challenges may need extra practice to master the basics of reading.

Parents and caregivers: If your child is struggling with reading, talk to the teacher about ways to help. You can also talk about getting an evaluation for special education. An evaluation can help you better understand what's causing your child's trouble with both reading and executive function.

Key takeaways

Working memory and flexible thinking are key executive function skills that help kids become good readers.

Kids who have trouble in this area can struggle with understanding what they've read.

With extra support and resources, these kids can become fluent readers.

About the author

About the author

Kate Kelly has been writing and editing for more than 20 years, with a focus on parenting.

Reviewed by

Reviewed by

Stephanie M. Carlson, PhD is a professor and director of research at the Institute of Child Development, University of Minnesota.

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5 ways executive function challenges can impact reading

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Executive function plays a big role in reading. Learn how executive functioning issues can impact skills like decoding and comprehension.

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LP-Executive Skills and Reading (Comprehension) 

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Small-Group and One-to-One Interventions for Children Who "Read" but Don't Comprehend

-Kelly Cartwright

Assessments based on included word cards help identify inflexible readers.

A straightforward, needs-driven research-tested intervention using the cards turns readers around fast.

Engaging lessons with wordplay, word and picture cards, comprehension strategies, and more support the transition from word callers into full-time meaning makers.

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Word Callers is an assessment and intervention developed by Kelly Cartwright that uses word and picture cards to measure and support readers’ sound-meaning

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Laurie Cutting, Ph.D.

Laurie E. Cutting, Ph.D., is Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Special Education, Psychology, Radiology, and Pediatrics. She is also a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories and a member of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute as well as the Center for Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University. She is the principal investigator of several NIH-funded research projects on reading and reading comprehension and a co-investigator on other NIH-funded and Department of Education-funded projects on reading, reading disabilities, and ADHD. She focuses on brain-behavior relations in children and adolescents, with a particular emphasis on reading disabilities, language and executive function.

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Neurobiological Foundations of Executive Functions and Implications for Reading and Writing

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Laurie E. Cutting, Ph.D., is Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Special Education, Psychology, Radiology, and Pediatrics. She is also a Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories and a member of the Vanderbilt Brain Institute as well as the Center for Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience at Vanderbilt University.

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Executive function includes key skills like attention and working memory. Learn how problems with executive function impact learning, working, and everyday life.

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A Conversation about Reading and the Brain : Reading Matters to Maine : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

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Dr. Christopher Kaufman Ph.D. explains how our brain learns to read and how to effectively teach literacy to children. Presented by Reading Matters to Maine…

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Did you know that learning to read does not come naturally to our brains? We are hard-wired to speak but we are not hard-wired to read. This makes sense when we consider that oral language was the primary means of communication for much of human history. Unlike spoken language, however, where nearly all children can learn to speak simply by being surrounded by conversation, most children cannot learn to read just by being read to or surrounded by books. In this article we will dive into a broad overview of neuroscience to help us understand how our brains learn to read.

From Speech to Print

First and foremost, reading is a process of turning symbols into sounds. Children learn to read from speech to print. This means that oral language sets the foundation for future reading instruction. For our toddlers and preschoolers, we want to immerse them in a world of words, sounds, and vocabulary. We want to talk to them and read to them as much as possible. Rhyming with children during these early years is important. What we do with spoken language in our child's earliest years will set the stage for reading later down the road.

"Recent brain research allows us to link our understanding of the sequence of steps a child goes through in learning to read to the work that must go on within the brain to solve the reading code as well as to the teaching of reading. Within his brain, the child is literally building the neural circuitry that links the sounds of spoken words, the phonemes, to the print code, the letters that represent these sounds."
Sally Shaywitz in the book Overcoming Dyslexia

What Part of the Brain is Responsible for Reading?

Neural activity that is necessary for effective reading primarily takes place in the left side (left hemisphere) of the brain. Without getting too technical, the important thing to recognize in the image below is that the same part of the brain used for awareness of speech and sounds (Broca's Area) and the same part of the brain used for comprehending the meaning of words (Wernicke's Area) will also be repurposed once our children go from speaking/listening to decoding/reading.

The teaching implications for this are huge when it comes to reading instruction. Rather than rushing to put books into the hands of children, expecting them to independently read before they have been adequately prepared for the decoding demands of that book, we can engage these areas of the brain just as effectively through verbal interaction and by reading aloud to them. Reading aloud also strengthens listening comprehension and allows our children access to higher-level vocabulary that they would not yet be able to decode on their own when they are just learning to read. It might seem obvious but it's also important to note that young children cannot understand the meaning of a word until they have heard that word spoken aloud! In other words, they can't jump straight to Wernicke's Area and know what a word means. That word must first be processed through Broca's area.

Facial Recognition Repurposed

There is a small section in the Occipito-temporal region of the brain called the Visual Word Form Area (the green oval towards the lower back part of the left hemisphere in the image above) that, from birth, is responsible for facial recognition. As our children progress through their early years of life, this part of the brain eventually gets hijacked to recognize letters and letter patterns. Through the intentional building of print awareness, we rewire this section of the brain to go from just recognizing faces to now also recognizing print. Our job is extremely important: We are quite literally helping our children rewire their brains!

Reading is Not a Visual Process

When we are considering how our brains learn to read, we often think of it as a visual process. We of course need our eyes to see the letters. The minute our brains see those letters, however, the process of reading turns into a phonological (speech or sound) process. The average adult stores 30,000-70,000 words and word parts for automatic and effortless retrieval while reading. This simply cannot be accomplished by visual memory alone.

How Our Brains Read

The signal comes in through our eyes.

This information immediately travels back to the back bottom part of our brain where the Visual Word Form Area recognizes the letters/graphemes as text. (GREEN AREA)

Neural Activity then moves from the back of the brain forward to the phonological areas, which are the Parietal-Temporal Region (YELLOW AREA) and Broca's area (RED AREA). This connects the print to the sounds to decode the word. Even without speaking the sound aloud, your brain is translating the printed text to a "spoken" sound and then putting those sounds together to form the word.

Next, Wernicke's area makes sense of what is being read, connecting it to images and background knowledge (BLUE AREA).

Watch this happen inside the brain via FMRI technology here (the first 15 seconds of this video):

Once this neural network is complete, it takes average and strong readers between 1-4 exposures to a word for the word to be translated to the phonological long term memory for immediate and effortless retrieval the next time the word is encountered. This process is referred to as Orthographic Mapping.

The process of orthographic mapping relies on a child's ability to independently decode. In order for decoding to take place, a child must have:

Phonic knowledge to know the sounds that the graphemes make (graphemes are the letter or letters that represent an individual sound)

Ability to blend in order to pronounce the word

Neural Signature for Struggling Readers and those with Dyslexia

As mentioned above, neural activity for effective and efficient reading primarily takes place in the left hemisphere. In the imaging of a strong reader, very little of the right hemisphere of the brain lights up (as shown in the white boxes below). This is not the case, however, for struggling readers or those with Dyslexia. In fact, the hemisphere activity appears to be flipped. Thanks to FMRI technology, we can see that the neural signature (the parts of the brain that "lights up") for struggling readers or those with Dyslexia is actually the right side of the brain rather than the left (shown in the orange box). This is due to the fact that children with reading difficulties often have weak neural connections in the left hemisphere of the brain and their brains are trying to compensate by utilizing the right side of the brain. Nancy Young estimates that at least 10-15% of children fall under this category. For these children, they may need up to 20 exposures decoding a word before it translates to phonological long-term memory.

The great news about this, however, is that children who are compensating by using the right side of their brain as they learn to read can change through the process of explicit and systematic instruction in phonological awareness and phonics. This means it is possible to develop the neural networks needed for a student to become an efficient reader.

All Children Benefit from Instruction Rooted in the Science of Reading

In conclusion, all children can benefit from systematic and explicit instruction in phonological awareness and phonics but this type of instruction is absolutely essential for children with poor neural connections in the left side of the brain. We have created our foundational reading curriculum to help all children learn to read and are so thrilled with the progress that so many parents are making with their children using our curriculum.
References:
ESSDAK. (2020, May 13). Pathways to Reading: Bridge the Gap Days 1, 2, 3 [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAdExGiHALtO68D9olZwviPhhXuOdRiB6

Kilpatrick, D. (2015). Essentials of Assessing, Preventing, and Overcoming Reading Difficulties. Wiley.

Ohio Department of Education. (2020, September 3). Literacy Academy 2020: The Reading Brain - Michelle Elia [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/5cjH-qsQ8yQ

Shaywitz, S. (2003). Overcoming Dyslexia: A New and Complete Science-Based Program for Reading Problems at any Level. Vintage Books.

Wise Channel. (2013, October 25). How the Brain Learns to Read - Prof Stanislas Dehaene [Video]. Youtube. https://youtu.be/25GI3-kiLdo?t=209

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How Our Brains Learn to Read - Pathways to Reading Homeschool

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Reading is not a natural process. This article explores how our brains learn to read and how we can help our children effectively rewire them!

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How do you progress monitor this type of intervention?

If you find that a student that struggles with executive functioning does not have that internal monologue, are there suggested strategies in teaching them to build this skill?

What are the statistics on EF and reading difficulties?

Additional Strategies:

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Visualizing and Verbalizing---Supporting Nonverbal WM with visualizing

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Visualizing and Verbalizing---Supporting Nonverbal WM with visualizing

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Nanci Bell

co-founder of Lindamood-bell

Clinical research and experience over the last thirty years indicate there is a separate comprehension weakness that is rarely identified. This weakness often undermines the reading process...It is weakness, based in the sensory system, in creating an imaged gestalt.

Michelle reads words accurately, but she doesn't understand what she reads. Words seem to "go in one ear and out the other", and she struggles with following directions. Her parents express frustration about her weak short-term and long-term memory. Her teachers think she is not trying, and she has been labeled as having ADHD.

A primary cause of language comprehension problems is difficulty creating an imagined gestalt. This is called weak concept imagery. This weakness causes individuals to get only "parts" of information they read or hear, but not the whole.

Individuals of all ages may experience the symptoms of a weakness in concept imagery.

This causes weakness in:

Reading comprehension

Listening comprehension

Critical thinking and problem solving

Following directions

Memory

Oral language expression

Written language expression

Grasping humor

Interpreting social situations

Understanding cause and effect

The Visualizing and Verbalizing® (V/V®) program develops concept imagery-the ability to create an imagined or imaged gestalt from language-as a basis for comprehension and higher order thinking. The development of concept imagery improves reading and listening comprehension, memory, oral vocabulary, critical thinking, and writing.

It is a joy to go to a school board meeting and have reports back for the first time
where you see kids moving out of far-below basic, out of basic, into basic and proficient.
As a school board member and a dad, I just want to say thank you.

It is a joy to go to a school board meeting and have reports back for the first time
where you see kids moving out of far-below basic, out of basic, into basic and proficient.
As a school board member and a dad, I just want to say thank you.

Who can we help?

We work with children and adults of all ages and levels.

Some students come to us with general learning challenges or a previous diagnosis such as dyslexia or autism spectrum disorder.

Some students come to us to enhance their skills or to just make learning easier.

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The Nancibell® Visualizing and Verbalizing® Language Comprehension and Thinking (V/V)

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The Visualizing and Verbalizing®️ (V/V®️) program, by Nanci Bell, develops concept imagery-the ability to create an imaged gestalt from language-as a basis for comprehension and higher order thinking. The development of concept imagery improves reading and listening comprehension, memory, oral vocabulary, critical thinking, and writing.