A Unique Child: Cognitive Development - First reading

In the grand scale of human evolution, reading is a recent cultural invention. Indeed, humans have only been reading and writing for about 5,000 years, so it's unlikely that we have anything like 'genes for reading'.

Scientists now agree that evolution capitalises on old brain circuits, that learning written language reuses circuits in the brain - left occipital and temporal lobes - which evolved to support spoken language, and that learning to read restructures the brain over developmental time. So, the brains of illiterate adults are different from those of literate adults.

While almost all children will eventually read fluently, for some the process will be harder than for others. Reading difficulties are common, and often not identified until a child is several years into schooling. Yet, scientific research offers many ways to detect potential difficulties much earlier than this, thereby reducing the impact on self-esteem and on other aspects of school learning.

SPOKEN LANGUAGE

People used to think that reading mainly involved the visual system. However, a large body of research indicates that the way in which very young children mentally represent spoken language is a critical foundation to reading. For instance, one of the most reliable indicators of potential reading problems is a child's inability to imitate spoken non-words that sound like words from the child's language (obeying the phonotactics of the language) but happen not to exist, such as /joop/, /meb/, /neegong/, /blestarly/, /casseedoolid/.

Almost any pre-schooler can repeat known words, but a minority encounter problems imitating new combinations of speech sounds. This can reveal poor mental representations of the sound patterns of their spoken language, which will later cause difficulties in sound-to-letter mapping (phoneme-grapheme mapping) when they start learning to read. So, early attention to children's phonemic processing is very important.

Phonemes are the smallest units of sound within words, like /p/, /o/, /t/ in /pot/. Also critical is the ability to recognise that the /p/ in /pot/ is the same phoneme as the /p/ in /tap/ or /pit/, even if the phonetics of each /p/ differ slightly in sound.

Another early indicator of possible problems with representing the sound patterns of spoken language is when children have difficulty recognising rhyme. Scientists use an odd-man-out game to explore this in young children. For example, they provide examples of rhyme and then ask the child to pick out the word that doesn't go with the others (for example, /dog/ /pit/ /hog/; or /hat/ /cat/ /bike/). What is a very easy task for some children turns out to be a particularly tricky one for a few others.

In sum, storing clear mental representations of the sounds of spoken language is vital for tackling written language.

SOUND-TO-LETTER MAPPING

In some languages, the relationship between letters and sounds is straightforward. Spanish and Italian illustrate this well: both languages are characterised by words that have regular sound-to-letter spellings, that is, 'transparent orthography' (for example, /perro/ /mesa/ /casa/ /arbol/). So, once children learn how to pronounce each letter-sound in those languages, they are able to read almost any word, regardless of whether they know the word or not. English, alas, is not transparent! Indeed, /too reed inglish iz hard/!

Recall the different pronunciations of words written with /ough/ - /cough/, /enough/, /ought/, /through/, /though/, /thorough/ - or of the spellings of /to/, /too/ and /two/. Other words should be easy for sound-to-letter mapping (for example, house/mouse). However, if the child's mental representations of spoken words is fuzzy and their brain doesn't rapidly process acoustic differences, then a set of neurons will fire in the brain that are too broad. Subsequently, when the child comes to mapping the sounds to letters, the task is much harder than for the child whose mental representations of spoken words are clearly differentiated from one another.

Learning to read English involves not only sound-to-letter mapping, but also learning complex rules about how sounds affect one another within words. It also requires the learner to memorise exception words that simply don't follow the rules - words like 'pint' (versus 'mint') or 'yacht' - as well as differentiating between homophones like 'new/knew' or 'you/ewe'.

PRECURSORS TO READING

Long before children are taught anything about sound-to-letter mappings, they are already processing examples of writing and number in their environment. They pay attention to words like /taxi/, /Tesco/ or /McDonalds/, which they see frequently.

One study asked pre-readers to sort cards that varied in a number of ways. Some cards had normal words (cat, house), some a single letter (A), some a string of repeated letters (PPPPPP), and some a mixture of letters and drawings or letters and numbers (P48AGdollars). Other cards contained various sequences of numbers (7, 88888, 245, 1000). Still others just depicted drawings. The child's task was to sort the cards into different baskets: those 'good for reading', those 'good for counting', and a third basket for those 'not good for reading or counting'.

These pre-readers turned out to be astonishing in the knowledge they had implicitly acquired by observing their environment. While a single number (7) was sorted into the 'good for counting' basket, a single letter (P) was put into the 'not good for either' basket. All drawings were considered not good for either. A string of identical numbers was fine for counting, but a string of identical letters was not good for reading. Some children also demonstrated subtler knowledge - for example, a string of consonants (pstrvc) was not good for reading, but a string of alternating vowels and consonants was good (colodega).

So, while the children could barely read any letters or numbers, they had been quietly acquiring knowledge that would become useful for future learning. They had already discovered some of the constraints on written number and written language, and firmly differentiated drawing from all written forms. Card sorting games of this kind could be readily used at nursery to encourage awareness of the written system in the environment.

READINESS FOR READING

Research has identified several factors that influence children's readiness for reading, many of which have nothing to do with letter learning. One clearly involves abilities like those identified in the above sorting task. Another concerns the extent to which children see their parents reading, as this confers a special value to reading and will often crop up in pretend play, with the child holding a book upside down while mouthing lots of words!

Others involve sensitivity to rhyme and an interest in/awareness of language. Children may ask questions like, 'Is it "a nelephant" or "an elephant"?' 'Why is that called a cooker? You're the cooker?' (the -er ending denoting agent, like dancer or teacher).

Even once they start acquiring letter-sound mappings, there are still many hurdles involving meaning. One study presented pre-readers with words and asked them simply to guess what was written. For instance, on one card was written the words 'train' and 'locomotive', and children were asked to guess which word was train. Many pre-readers chose the longer word, locomotive, 'because trains are longer than locomotives'!

A delightful example comes from a five-year-old sounding out correctly each of the letters in the word 'T-E-S-C-O', and then claiming that the word said 'Waitrose'! For him, the relationship between his successful letter-sound exercise and meaningful words was yet to be discovered.

Giving toddlers at nursery a head start in reading can have long-term advantages. If they begin primary school already comfortable with what reading is all about and having fun trying to decode written words, they will be able to focus more readily on other forms of learning, without stumbling at the first hurdle. This makes overall learning more enjoyable and promotes self-confidence. Research also shows that often, early readers are immediately regarded as having higher academic potential when they enter primary school, leading them to begin independent reading sooner than their peers and to become better spellers.

The nursery setting is ideal for indirectly stimulating aspects of reading. Art, music, cooking and other fun activities present opportunities to play with individual letters and the sounds they produce. Words are everywhere - on street signs, food packaging, toys, books - letters can be drawn in sand, mud or paint, or put together with building blocks. Research has shown that multi- sensory learning creates stronger mental representations. Rather than just listening to or looking at letters, children should be encouraged to trace letters with their fingers, sing tunes about them and play games with them.

It is also important to get young children to pay attention to the beginnings and ends of words. This is best done by comparing closely-sounding words to learn to differentiate their initial or final sounds (for example, mouse/house or hop/hot).

Looking for opportunities in the normal nursery day routine to look at, play with and make use of written language is the best way to introduce the concept of reading early on, paving the way for a new generation of enthusiastic early readers.

MOTHER AND DAUGHTER

Annette Karmiloff-Smith studied in Geneva with Jean Piaget, where she completed her doctorate, and is now a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Brain and Cognitive Development, Birkbeck, University of London

Kyra Karmiloff has a BSc in Anthro-pology and an MSc in Psychological Research Methods from University College London and was a research assistant at the Centre for Studies in Language at Cambridge University.

She is a novelist and co-author with her mother of three books on child development and on language acquisition

REFERENCES

• Dehaene, S (2009), Reading in the Brain. NY: Penguin Viking

• Ferreiro, E & Teberosky, A (1982), Literacy before schooling. Heinemann

• Flax, JF, Realpe-Bonilla, T, Hirsch LS, Brzustowicz LM, Bartlett CW & Tallal P (2003), 'Specific language impairment in families: Evidence for co-occurrence with reading impairments', Journal of Speech and Language Hearing Research, 46(3), 530-543

• Hulme, C, Hatcher, PJ, Nation, K, Brown,A, Adams, J & Stuart, G (2002), 'Phoneme awareness is a better predictor of early reading skill than onset-rime awareness', Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 82(1), 2-28

• Laing, E & C Hulme, C (1999), 'Phonological and semantic processes influence beginning readers' ability to learn to read words', Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 73, 183-207

• Muter, V, Hulme, C, Snowling, MJ & Stevenson, J (2004), 'Phonemes, Rimes, Vocabulary, and Grammatical Skills as Foundations of Early Reading Development: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study', Developmental Psychology, 40, 663-681