“Teaching Reading Is Rocket Science.” This is one of my favorite quotations about reading, and it is the title of an article written by Louisa C. Moats, Ed.D., for the American Federation of Teachers. It is a quote that I frequently use with parents when they ask me why some schools do not appear to know how to teach reading properly. This book addresses the complexity of reading and its instruction and also begins to address some of the difficulties inherent in the application of research on reading to an educational setting. It attempts to bridge knowledge from neuroscience, genetics, cognitive science, child development, neuropsychology, and education.
The volume is divided into four parts. The first part, What Is Reading and What Are Reading Disorders?, tackles the definition of reading disorders from neuroscience, genetics, and evolutionary perspectives. In the introductory chapter, Fischer, Immordino-Yang, and Waber write about the range and limits of plasticity and how they are “mitigated by different kinds of reading instruction” at different ages. In a chapter on an evolutionary perspective, Immordino-Yang and Deacon contrast the long history of spoken language with the “immature” phonologically based reading and alphabetic systems that are relatively new on the evolutionary scene. They use this as evidence to highlight how unlikely it would be to find a “single gene” for reading acquisition and to compare the “remarkably predictable and robust” nature of language acquisition with the complexity of reading acquisition. They also make an argument that will be familiar to many neuropsychologists: that dyslexia may not be a biological abnormality but rather a class of special conditions within normal variation. That is, had phonologically based reading not come onto the scene, people now classified as dyslexic might not be considered disabled.
In the second part, Reading and the Growing Brain, the authors draw on information from cognitive psychology, imaging studies, and developmental psychology. The plethora of sometimes confusing information on the neural substrate of dyslexia is briefly reviewed. Pare-Blagoev opines that functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have probably contributed the most because they yield the most consistent findings in contrast to the inconsistency of other findings in areas of study such as visual processing and temporal rate processing. Galaburda and Sherman, in their chapter on genetics, posit that the anatomical variability among dyslexics may be directly related to behavioral variability.
In the third part, Watching Children Read, contributors review videos of children who struggle with reading. Included in an appendix are the verbatim transcripts of these children’s performances on reading and related tests as well as behavioral observations by their examiners. I found this section especially impressive and useful, as reading transcripts, while often included in educational texts on reading written for teachers and other educational professionals, are not typically included in more academic texts for neuropsychologists.
The final section, Reading Skills in the Long Term, addresses broader issues, including reading across the life span and the difficulties integrating conflicting research findings. Rose, a reading teacher, makes a plea for more accessible research that can be applied to schools, enjoining researchers to “join us in the trenches.” I wish she had written more. This section might have been strengthened by having a chapter written by a teacher or special education administrator explaining the obstacles involved in implementing research findings in a school system, such as responding to pressure from parents and other sources, intensive marketing of particular reading systems by textbook publishers (whether or not those systems of instruction are research based), and school district politics. I found the book’s final chapter by David Rose to be quite thought provoking. As a former neuropsychologist and founder/director of a company for adaptive technology in education, he is, as he puts it, a “consumer of neuroscience … more than a producer.” He suggests that it might be useful to apply Teuber’s double dissociation hypothesis to reading research, and he discusses “thorny” areas in reading research, such as hyperlexia in young children, and how deaf and blind individuals learn to read.
Contributors to the book include not only academics but also school administrators and technology professionals. They are leading experts in their respective fields of neuroscience, neuropsychology, developmental psychology, cognitive psychology, and education. Although advertised by Cambridge University Press as of likely interest to both researchers and graduate students, clinical neuropsychologists will also find much of value. Mind, Brain, and Education in Reading Disorders attempts to achieve a “synthesis of mind, brain, and education for reading disorders” and stresses as a major goal the promotion of meaningful interdisciplinary thinking about reading and learning disorders in general. As a whole, the volume succeeds in this objective. It is probably less accessible to educational professionals, as it presumes a certain knowledge of brain–behavior relationships. Moreover, those interested in intervention “nuts and bolts” (e.g., Which are the better reading programs?) will not find those specifics included, although there is some discussion of decoding, fluency, reading comprehension, quality and level of previous reading instruction, and the complex relationships among these factors.
It is probably an understatement to say that research on the etiology, treatment, neurobiology, assessment, and treatment of dyslexia (“reading disorder”) has grown exponentially in the past decade. Our understanding of the clinical issues involved in reading disorders has grown correspondingly as well. Although in some ways it could be argued that dyslexia is a more homogeneous disorder than other learning disabilities (early phonological processing deficits in preschool are strong predictors of reading success), reading disorders are nonetheless quite complex, as the contributors to this book repeatedly point out. The many factors that contribute to success in learning to read (genetic, biological, and environmental) have led to debates, acrimony, and also to the realization/ acknowledgment among many that there is no easy answer to the challenges of teaching children to read well. These are not trivial issues. Although the U.S. Census Bureau reports a 99% literacy rate, several large studies have reported that 20–50% of adults in the United States are functionally illiterate and cannot consistently read at a fourth-grade level. Poor reading instruction likely has contributed to this problem. Educational institutions have been slow to use research results. In fairness to school districts, some research has not been tailored for use in educational settings or else results have been obtained in such a way that direct application to the classroom would be difficult. The debate on the results of the Reading First initiative may exemplify the problem of translating research into practical programs. This book is an important contributor to the current dialogue and debate.
