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Freethought
Association of West Michigan
Meeting Minutes for September 10, 2003; #146
Topic:
The History of Language Science
The Freethought Movie Nights are re-established and are still
being hosted by Jason Pittman. Contact him at 616-634-2471 or
jpittman@backpacker.com <mailto:jpittman@backpacker.com>
, or visit our website: www.freethoughtassociation.org for more
info. The Michael Moore movie “Bowling for Columbine”
is the next featured film to be viewed. This get together will
start earlier—at 6PM-- for a barbeque/ social time before
the movie.
We are taking reservations for the Winter Solstice Party to be
held at the Siam Lady (Thai food) in Jenison. Cost is 20.00 per
person, all included.
We had our Freethought Assoc. Board Meeting prior to this regular
meeting.
Our topic for this meeting was “The History of Language
Science” presented by John Joldersma, a member of FAoWM,
reading specialist, retired school teacher and rock hound. He
was gracious enough to pinch hit for us and prepare his presentation
on short notice due to our original speaker having to cancel regarding
a family member’s health concerns. Joldersma focused on
reading for his presentation, noting that it is the only thing
we have invented as a species that cannot be found elsewhere in
the Kingdom Animalia. Tool use, art, fairly complex body language
and oral communication systems, etc. all have analogues in other
species’ productions. And it is quite a recent event for
our species, relative to evolutionary time and even regarding
other cultural accoutrements we have. Of course, as it is with
the problems of fossilization for any abundant representation
of soft- bodied fauna, we also have scanty records for any reading/writing
system before harder, more archival formats were used. However,
Dr. Joldersma said that the use of written communication probably
only goes back some 8,000 years or so, where we have examples
of baked clay tablets. Science in general and reading science
in particular is an extremely recent development for humankind.
As Dr. Forbes mentioned once, there are more living/working scientists
today than if you took all the scientists who ever lived since
the inception of science itself and combined them.
Joldersma, who has taught in various places—some quite rough,
and received his doctorate in reading, is quite frustrated with
the way that reading education has failed to advance and how it
actually incorporates reading fluency debacles into the teaching
process. One example is how everyone is automatically stuck reading
together so that the pace is set by the slowest, poorest readers.
Our eyes capture four to five “pictures” per second
with the rate hindered only by the focal point of our eyes and
processing time for the incoming information. These are impeded
by the above-mentioned practice. The part of our eye that is most
rich in visual reception is used for close, precise tasks (including
reading), even though our actual peripheral, wide-range vision
is quite good but inefficient for reading specific textual symbols.
Therefore, we cannot take in a page of text at a time but must
depend upon eye movement for reading. Interestingly, the brain
plots the next jump ahead of time, before the following line has
to be captured as information. Our presenter referred to this
as a “ballistic” jump. Another educational problem
Dr. Joldersma railed against in his presentation was the emphasis
on phonics. This too breaks the back of the pace of “natural
readers” or becoming one. It is word comprehension, he stressed,
not mental enunciation of words that is important to rapid reading
with effectiveness. One can learn to sound out the words at an
unnatural pace but have no idea of what the body of text slogged
through was actually about. He also showed us how words with the
same spelling but different meaning can affect our reading comprehension
using a paragraph fraught with many such examples of homonyms
embedded within. Readers who have focused on word meaning are
not arrested in their pace when reading double meaning words because
the processing is rapid enough as the eyes flow across the text
to flip the word to the correct context without any conscious
awareness of this feat. This is not the case when using a phonics—sound-
by- sound-- approach.
Dr. Joldersma also talked of the actual science of seeing and
processing visual information; the route taken as light and information
reaches the eye and is computed in the brain. He noted that cognitive
psychology began in 1967, which undertook as part of the research,
to understand eye movement and when experiments were conducted
to take actual recordings of the eyes as they worked to gather
information. This work was begun about 100 years before but rediscovered
in the 1960’s.
The tasks for reading comprehension relative to speed were done
(around the time of WWI) simply by having 45 professors read as
much as they could in 20 seconds- the time frame between occlusion
of the text by the experimenters. The readers were then tested
to see what they recalled. The results showed a 7-1 difference
in reading rate with the fastest readers also emerging as the
best ones for comprehension of the text. We were told the history
of various devices employed to try to increase reading speed,
including spring- loaded contraptions that covered the text, spurring
the reader along to devour as many words as possible before they
were covered and other motorized reading enhancers. Not much was
done in this vein after WWI, regarding reading speed, until it
was picked up again after WWII and the research was actually prodded
by the war itself. The story Dr. Joldersma related was that trigger-
happy soldiers were shooting down allied aircraft (what we now
refer to as “friendly fire” in our modern euphemistic
terminology) at an alarming rate and this was seen as a result
of not processing the visual target information with sufficient
swiftness and comprehension. He quipped that some soldiers were
even wasting bullets shooting toward the planet Venus! One development
was a scope that flashed images of American and enemy aircraft
at a rate of one 100th of a second to train the perceptual accuracy
of the soldiers and this indeed deceased the rate of friendly
fire mishaps.
The 1950’s were where the next big push for speed- reading
came about but the fruits of the research done then, Joldersma
lamented, never made it into the elementary schools. The Kennedy
administration spurred on the next wave toward speed- reading.
JFK himself was a “natural reader” with a high rate
of speed/comprehension. Again this was targeted not for schoolchildren
but for the cabinet of the administration. And guess who was hired
to teach these cabinet members speed reading? None other than
Evelyn Wood. She taught the method—that she would become
famous for when her teachings did indeed make it into mainstream
awareness—that Jodersma derisively referred to as finger
waving. The problem was that Wood’s method was decoupled
from the actual science of reading and that the subjects often
ended up focusing on their fingers, rather than the target words.
It went against the natural eye plotting that takes place in the
brain by creating a stumbling block to absorbing the information
that does come through from the peripheral vision and seeing the
whole page generally to assist in the eye movement plotting. Under
this method, even where reading speed picked up, comprehension
was lost. People tested who used the Wood method were given essentially
“word salads”—nonsense jumblings of words—and
they never even noticed! A quote Joldersma gave us was “Speed
reading is as impossible in theory as it is common in practice.”
Other things tried to assist in the ease and reading speed of
people were color choices for paper, lighting, even vibrators.
Font selection was tested and it was found that serifs in letters
help to speed up reading (which is counter intuitive to this writer
to these minutes). Another interesting result of the research
was that the white (negative) spaces are as important as the black
printed (positive spaces) words for reading alacrity and comprehension.
With the advent of computers becoming more ubiquitous, other less
cumbersome testing measures were put in place. Some tests focused
on how important the periphery was to fine point reading. Schools
are still not involved in these studies directly and lag far behind
in utilizing the information uncovered over time regarding reading
fluency and speed.
Again Dr. Joldersma opposed the emphasis on phonics that is standard
in education—resulting in what he referred to as mere “word
calling” rather than understanding of the material being
read. He said that President Bush, in his “No Child Left
Behind” campaign pushes the “Phonics for Everyone”
concept to the detriment of potentially good readers.
Using a diagram, we traced together how the eye works- the muscles
used in eye movement, the backward assembly of the bundling of
receptor nerves (but one of the many examples of UN-intelligent
“design” in our species—the supposed pinnacle
of creation—even though this “design flaw” is
not seen in many other “lower” fauna), the optic chiasma
where nerves cross over resulting in half of the signals from
each eye going to different neurons and half to another, the route
back to the principle visual processing region in the back of
the head—the occipital area, and the rods and cones roles
in the entire electro-chemical process of seeing. Some processing
is actually done in the eye itself and, as Dr. Sullivan noted
in one of his presentations to our group, there are cells that
react specifically to certain patterns—contrasts or the
orientation of objects in space, etc. The sequencing of the patterns
of which cells are firing and to what degree is processed in a
stunning example of stupendous brain computation resulting in
what feels to us is a passive and effortless act: seeing.
We next turned to the four levels of reading types. Type ones
are the poorest of the literate population in reading in both
speed and comprehension. Every word is laboriously sounded out.
Type twos are the word by word readers as taught in the schools
still. Joldersma opined that our educational system is as if it
was imposed on us by our worst enemy. Type threes are the level
where rapid reading comes into play. The chief impediment to speed
reading is subvocalizing, or mentally if not actually rendering
the words read as if speaking them aloud. The neural course actually
goes through the muscles used in speech and the pace becomes set
by the delays inherent in one who is communicating the text orally.
This occurs in some 95% of the population. The Type threes are
not subvocalizers and typically read at a rate of about 700- 750
words per minute. One technique our presenter advocated to kill
our tendency to subvocalize is a method of counting: “1
and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1…” and so on. “The words
tend to crowd in between the numbers.” The 4th level readers
are natural speed- readers. He equated this sort of reading to
meditation and this writer thought what he said sounded a lot
like “the zone” that athletes, artists and others
acquire when engaged in a near effortless, timeless and extremely
efficient activity. The brain quiets and tunes out the distractions
of the environment. The eyes race across the page and many who
have just emerged from a level three reading ability have a startle
effect when first attaining this 4th level. This is the sort of
reader “that was discovered, not made by an Evelyn Wood,”
Dr. Joldersma said. Interestingly, the reader at this level is
not actively aware of the comprehension of the text until he or
she is asked about it! It does not feel subjectively to this level
reader as if s/he is absorbing the information. But what puts
the brakes on for this type of reader is coming across a word
that is not understood, showing that comprehension and speed of
reading are coupled. This last level of reader has a rate of at
least 1200 words per minute but there have been cases of some
reading at a rate around 2,000. The highest recorded was an astounding
rate of 3,500 w.p.m. It’s not physically possible to turn
pages fast enough to go beyond this rate effectively and if a
scrolled text approach is employed as in computer monitors, this
medium presents other side complications that impede a swifter
reading speed.
The context is important for some speed- reading rates. For instance
jokes lose their droll quality when speed read and pornography
is not comprehended in a titillating fashion when read too fast.
Poems, dependent so much on cadence and the “voice”
of the work, lose their lyricism when read with alacrity. Dr.
Joldersma said that people build up connections in the brain for
certain types of literature, allowing material that one individual
can read at a break-neck pace to be one that another is hindered
in, even if the basic words are in each person’s vocabulary.
The other person, conversely, may be able to read in another sort
of literary niche at the rate of the 1st person, who now finds
himself slowed a bit more.
As in the ease of foreign language acquisition, there is apparently
a cut off point where if swift methods for reading based on comprehension
skills are not taught, they will not likely be learned without
great effort on the part of the individual. The age is about 12.
Dr. Joldersma, who has worked overseas and in a wide variety of
settings in the U.S. in education, said that socioeconomic class
differences impact upon the level of readers produced generally.
He taught in Korea and found that Koreans generally read at about
500 w.p.m., contrasted to Americans who read generally at about
200-250 w.p.m. Korean is a phonetically- based language—moreover
the shape of the character is iconic for the tongue shape. The
reason why this does not refute Joldersma’s earlier declarations
is that English is not phonetically- based. If it were, then the
“Hooked on Phonics” approach would be a wise one,
and reading speed would indeed likely increase under this method.
Also, in referencing other countries and cultures, he noted that
the orientation of the text (up-down, right-to-left, or what have
you) has nothing to do with reading speed for the native of that
culture.
We talked about blindness and how the same sorts of reading rates
are found in tactile Braille readers as in visual text readers.
Just as there is a part of the visual system given over to seeing
the larger area and assisting in eye movement plotting for rapid
visually intact readers, the rapid Braille reader uses one hand
to acquire the sentences and paragraphs while the other one catches
the words themselves. The Braille word reading finger is over
represented in the brain map of people born blind. Deaf people
register gestures in the same way as hearing people but input
sign language through the same modalities as the hearing individual
as if truly hearing words through their eyes whereas gestures
are merely movements with generally understood meanings in space;
not perceived as language.
Our presenter said that it is difficult to identify a child who
has or will develop reading disabilities before the third grade
and that fetal alcohol syndrome wreaks far more havoc than its
more widely discussed sister: “crack babies.” He told
us that there will always be 2% of children left behind no matter
what. One presentation to our group was on the different levels
of critical thinking. Related to the information from that presentation
with this one was that age matters for attainment of higher levels.
Before the 6th grade speed- reading is not possible—the
brain development necessary simply is not there before that grade
level. Teaching must be to the word comprehension itself—there
is no meaning in phonetics as such. One young rapid reader Joldersma
met was speeding across text at a grade level far exceeding his
own but stopped as if he hit a wall when he came to a word he
did not know. Once he knew it, he never halted at that word again
and could resume his fast rate. He was considered a student with
reading disabilities for Dr. Joldersma to try to assist! In fact,
it was that he could not adjust to the artificially constructed
system of education he was placed in that fought against his natural
reading ability. Joldersma said that the child should learn a
minimum of 75 words before s/he touches phonics.
This presentation was both entertaining and informative and, itself,
had a lively pace. Dr. Joldersma, by the way, produced all the
facts and figures, anecdotes and research results provided to
us throughout this information- rich presentation from memory—referring
not to any written information directly.
Secretary: Charles LaRue
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