The Literate And Numerate Brain
This chapter considers how skilled adult literacy and numeracy relates to other cognitive domains such as visual recognition and spoken language. The debate around whether there are specialized regions for recognizing printed letters, numbers, and words is covered. Beyond visual recognition, there is assumed to be two brain-based routes for reading: one involving phonetics and one involving semantic memory. This is discussed from developmental, neuroimaging, and cross-cultural perspectives. With regards to numerical cognition, evidence is presented that semantic representations for number are distinct from other kinds of words and that this reflects an evolutionary “start up kit” for an approximate understanding of numbers. An exact understanding of number may be supplemented, in humans, by language and cultural inventions (e.g., written number systems).
Multiple Choice Questions
Flashcards
Written languages based on the one-word–one-symbol principle
A Japanese writing system based on the logographic principle
A Japanese writing system in which each character denotes a syllable
The smallest meaningful unit of written language
A system of written language with an irregular (or semi-regular) correspondence between phonemes and graphemes
A system of written language with a regular correspondence between phonemes and graphemes
Effect whereby it is easier to detect the presence of a single letter presented briefly if the letter is presented in the context of a word
A two-way forced choice judgment about whether a letter string (or phoneme string) is a word or not
A store of the structure of known written words
A difficulty in reading words in which reading time increases proportionately to the length of the word
A tendency to reuse parts of the brain that evolved for evolutionary older functions (e.g., visual recognition) for culturally modern ones (e.g., reading).
A region of fusiform cortex that responds, in brain imaging, to numerals more than letters.
Neurons that respond preferentially to particular set sizes
The claim that accessing the spoken forms of words is an obligatory component of understanding visually presented words
Words that sound the same but have different meanings (and often different spellings), e.g. ROWS and ROSE
Ability to read non-words and regularly spelled words better than irregularly spelled words
Ability to read real words better than non-words
Real words are read better than non-words and semantic errors are made in reading
Problems in literacy acquisition that cannot be attributed to lack of opportunity, or basic sensory deficits
The ability to explicitly segment a speech stream into units such as syllables, rimes, and phonemes
Difficulties in understanding numbers; calculation difficulties
A system of writing numbers in which the quantity is determined by its place in the written string
If people are asked to make judgments about numbers (e.g. odd/even judgments), they are faster with their left hand for small numbers but faster with their right hand for large numbers
SNARC effect (Spatial–numerical association of response codes)
The process of putting each item in a collection in one-to-one correspondence with a number or some other internal/external tally
Effect whereby it is harder to decide which of two numbers is larger when the distance between them is small (e.g. 8–9 relative to 2–9)
Effect whereby it is easier to state which number is larger when the numbers are small (e.g. 2 and 4) relative to large (e.g. 7 and 9) even when the distance between them is the same
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