Tag Archives: Reading

Enabling Neurodiversity in the Workplace with Early Detection, Intervention

Eugene Edgar

Eugene Edgar

Reading and related language and information processing skills are crucial for effective academic and occupational performance.
For example, people with reading difficulties face challenges in completing education, securing post-college employment and advancing in careers, found University of Washington’s Phyllis Levine and Eugene Edgar.

However, early detection and intervention can equip people for effective performance in school and work situations by practicing required skills and learn problem solving skills to manage these information processing differences.

Kineret Sharfi

Kineret Sharfi

People with learning disabilities including reading difficulties face significant challenges: They are significantly less likely to attend 4-year college programs or graduate, noted Haifa University’s Kineret Sharfi and Sara Rosenbaum.

David Goldstein

David Goldstein

Similar results were reported separately in a study of U.S. high school graduates from classes of 1985-1990, interviewed in the next 5 year, by De Paul University’s Christopher Murray, with Donald E. Goldstein, Steven Nourse and Eugene Edgar of University of Washington.

Tomer Einat

Tomer Einat

Of even greater concern is that learning disabilities (LD) including low reading skills, were significantly associated with ADHD, school dropout age, and onset of criminal activity among Israeli-born prisoners, according to Bar-Ilan University Tomer Einat and Amela Einat of Tel-Hai Academic College.

Michelle Patterson

Michelle Patterson

Further, these information processing challenges were also prevalent among homeless adults in Canada, reported Simon Fraser University’s Michelle Patterson, Akm Moniruzzaman, and Julian M. Somers with Charles James Frankish of University of British Columbia.

Travis White-Schwoch

Travis White-Schwoch

For those with years of practice in reading, Northwestern’s Travis White-Schwoch noted that learning to read is a chief developmental milestone with lifelong consequences.”
His research colleagues Kali Woodruff Carr, Elaine C. Thompson, Samira Anderson, Trent Nicol, Steven G. Zecker, Ann R. Bradlow and Nina Kraus added “… an ongoing challenge has been to identify candidates for intervention at a young-enough age.

Kali Woodruff Carr

Kali Woodruff Carr

However, it’s possible to identify potential reading difficulty is possible as early as age three.
This early awareness can enable early remediation efforts including skill-building in phonics, sound blending, phonograms, and close listening for comprehension and memorization, suggested among multi-media interventions and practice processes by Johns Hopkins’ Crystal Kelly and Linda Campbell.

Travis White-Schwoch 2White Schwoch’s team asked 112 children ages 3 – 14 years to detect consonants while in a noisy environment.
These children selected and watched a movie in separate booths while wearing electroencephalograms (EEG) and headphones, which provided “babbling” (semantically anomalous English sentences) in the right ear and “da” sounds in the left ear as the movie’s audio played .

Samira Anderson

Samira Anderson

The group accurately predicted that children with higher scores on a test understanding sounds that make up words and sentences (“phonological awareness”) were were more able to quickly and accurately detect the “da” sound.
Similarly, higher performance on phonological awareness predicted higher scores on a literacy test a year later among 37 four year old pre-reading children.

Trent Nicol

Trent Nicol

Neurodiversity” at work is a more frequent topic in popular business publications, public policy and diversity efforts, so it’s essential to understand the complexity of acquiring information processing skills, and the adverse consequences for those who don’t master these capabilities.

Steven Zecker

Steven Zecker

As a result, progressive workplaces enable greater inclusion of these different abilities by offering skill enhancement opportunities for those whose reading difficulties affect their ability to perform their work responsibilities.

-*How do you enable people with neurodiversity to optimally perform in the workplace?

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Reading Changes Brain Connectivity

Reading a novel causes measurable and persistent changes in brain connectivity, building on findings that reading literary fiction can increase empathic awareness.

Gregory Berns

Gregory Berns

Stories shape our lives and in some cases help define a person,” according Emory University’s Gregory S. Berns, who with Kristina Blaine, Michael J. Prietula,and Brandon E. Pye used laboratory imaging to investigate the impact of reading fiction.

The team conducted resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging scan (fMRI) of 21 volunteers on 19 consecutive days.

Robert Harris

Robert Harris

The first five daily scans provided a baseline, then participants read 1/9th (about 30 pages) of Robert Harriss Pompeii, a 2003 thriller, during the evening of the next 9 days.
For the next 9 mornings, they completed a quiz on the novel’s content, then resting-state (non-reading) fMRI.

Kristina Blaine

Kristina Blaine

The brain scans showed significant connectivity increases in the left angular/supramarginal gyri in the left temporal cortex and right posterior temporal gyri, areas associated with perspective taking and story comprehension.

Michael Prietula

Michael Prietula

The last 5 daily scans occurred with no reading the previous evening, and showed persistent connectivity changes for up to five days in bilateral somatosensory cortex in the central sulcus, suggesting neural mechanisms for:

Olaf Hauk

Olaf Hauk

-“Embodied semantics,” described by University of Cambridge’s Olaf Hauk and Nadja Tschentscher, as well as University of Southern California’s Lisa Aziz-Zadeh and Antonio Damasio

-“Grounded cognition,” summarized by Emory’s Lawrence Barsalou

Lawrence Barsalou

Lawrence Barsalou

Muscle memory, investigated by Amirkabir University of Technology’s Hossein Hassanpoor and Ali Fallah with Mohsin Raza of Baqiyatallah University of Medical Sciences.

Brandon Pye

Brandon Pye

This somatosensory activation suggests that reading a novel activates neural changes found with physical sensation and movement systems.
Berns noted that “…good stories can put you in someone else’s shoes in a figurative sense …(and)… may also be happening biologically.”

These fMRI findings reinforce findings that reading award-winning fiction can increase empathic awareness of others and related interpersonal insight.

-*What non-fiction reading provided memorable empathic insights about others?

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Reading Literary Fiction Increases “Theory of Mind” Empathic Insight

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka opined that people should read literature as “an axe to break the frozen sea inside us.”

David Comer Kidd-Emanuele Castano

David Comer Kidd-Emanuele Castano

New School for Social Research’s Emanuele Castano and David Comer Kidd showed the effectiveness of Kafka’s recommendation:  Reading award-winning literary fiction increased emotional intelligence, social perception, and empathy, known as Theory of Mind (ToM) abilities.

Theory of Mind (ToM) skills enable people to recognize and infer mental states like emotions, attitudes, concerns, and beliefs, and to understand that other people may have different beliefs, wishes, and goals.

In contrast, people with autism spectrum disorders, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, neurotoxicity due to alcohol abuse, can experience ToM deficits.

Castano and Kidd asked volunteers ages 18 to 75 to read:

  • Commercial fiction or
  • Literary non-fiction or
  • Factual non-fiction or
  • Nothing

Next, they asked participants to describe their own emotional states, or people’s emotions from photographs of their eyes.

Those who read literary fiction more accurately judge others’ emotions, a measure of emotional intelligence, social perception, and empathy.
Results demonstrated that literary fiction, which requires making inferences about characters, their emotions, relationships, and motivations, triggered this increased social insight.

Simon Baron-Cohen

Simon Baron-Cohen

Examples of tests to assess these skills are summarized by Simon Baron-Cohen, an expert on autism, and cousin of comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, along with the New School Researchers.

P. Matthijs Bal

P. Matthijs Bal

Vrije Universiteit‘s P. Matthijs Bal and Martijn Veltkamp of FrieslandCampina differentiated “transporting” fiction that “emotionally transported the reader into the story” with fiction that did not.

Martijn Veltkamp

Martijn Veltkamp

Bal and Veltkamp found that reading “transporting” fiction increases the reader’s empathic capabilities, but not fiction that lacks “transporting” qualities.

-*Which works of literary fiction have influenced your attitudes and empathic attunement with others?

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