Monday December 1, 2008 7:00 am Lethbridge

Wolf, M. (2007). Proust and the Squid.

Part I: How the Brain Learned to Read

Chapter 2. How The Brain Adapted Itself To Read: The First Writing Systems

• "Across every known system, writing began with a set of two or more epiphanies. First came a new form of symbolic representation, one level of abstraction more than earlier drawings: the amazing discovery that simple marked lines on clay tokens, stones, or turtle shells can represent either something concrete in the natural world, such as sheep; or something abstract, such as a number or an answer from an oracle. With the second breakthrough came the insight that a system of symbols can be used to communicate across time and space, preserving the words and thoughts of an individual or an entire culture. The third epiphany, the most linguistically abstract, did not happen everywhere: sound-symbol correspondence represents the stunning realization that all words are actually composed of tiny individual sounds and that symbols can physically signify each of these sounds for every word" [p. 25 - 26]

  A superb summary.

• "We may never say with authority which oral language came first, and there are even more questions about which written language was first." [p. 27]

  Why do we put so much emphasis on being first?

• "With each of the new writing systems, with their different and increasingly sophisticated demands, the brains circuitry rearranged itself, causing our repetoire of intellectual capacities to grow and change in great, wonderful leaps of thought." [p. 27]

  This is the key idea of the book.

• Rather than quote Wolf, I find the following wikipedia image to give me a better sense of the basic components of the brain:

The occipital lobe is primarily involved in visual processing. The temporal lobe is primarily involved in auditory processing as well as with semantic meaning. The parietal lobe is involved in sensory information and gives us our sense of space and movement. The frontal lobe is primarily involved in long-term memory as well as for attention and drive.

However the important point is simply that many areas of the brain are involved in most activities. Back to Wolf.

• "When a visual symbol like a token is imbued with meaning, our brain connects the basic visual areas to both the language system and the conceptual system in the temporal and parietal lobes and also to visual and auditory specialization regions called 'association areas'. ... One major difference between the human brain and the brain of any other primate is the proportion of our brain devoted to these 'association areas'." [p. 29]
  
  
• "However rudimentary, a novel form of connectivity began with the use of tokens ... " [p 31]
  
  
• About 3300 - 3200 BCE "a second breakthrough occurred: individual Sumerian inscriptions developed into a cuneiform system and Egyptian symbols became a hieroglyphic system. ... the Sumerians invented one of the first and most revered systems for writing ..." [p. 31 - 32]
  
  
• "Although far more comprehensive than tokens, the earliest signs in Sumerian cuneiform demanded only slightly more abstraction because they were generally pictographic ... This simple state of affairs didn't last long, however. Soon after it originated, Sumerian cuneiform, mysteriously and rather astonishingly, became sophisticated. Symbols rapidly became less pictographic and more logographic and abstract. ... Over time many of the Sumerian characters also began to represent some of the syllables in oral Sumerian. This is called a logosyllabary, and it makes a great many more demands on the brain." [p. 33 - 34]
  
  
• "... these motoric memory areas are far more activated in reading Chinese than in reading other languages, because that is how Chinese symbols are learned by young readers - by writing, over and over. This is also how Sumerian characters were learned ...". [p. 36 - 37]
  
  
• "Some lists taught semantic, or meaning-based, caategories, with each category identified by specific markers. ... a second set of word lists was grouped on the basis of shared pronunciations. ... In other words, long before twentieth-century educators would debate whether reading is best taught by phonicd or by meaning-based methods, the Sumerians were incorporating elements of both in their early instruction." [p. 38]
  
  
• "In current terms, the Sumerians used the first known metacognitive strategy to teach reading. That is, Sumerian teachers gave their pupils tools that made explicit how to learn something, and how to remember it." [p. 38]

  My preferred meta-cognitive approach to learning new conceptual material is to capture important sentences, copy them, and then add a reflective comment in a separate box. The weakest part of my metacognitive strategy is some form of review or repetition. I know it is important but I rarely do it. And I fail to adequately remember much of this material.

• "Cumulative evidence around the world suggests that writing was invented at least three times in the last part of the fourth milleneum BCE and at least three more times in different parts of the world in later periods." [p. 47]
  • Sumerian
  • Egyptian
  • Indus
  • Crete
  • Zapotec/Mayan/Olmec
  • Chinese

  This chapter describes early efforts at developing a written language and discusses the effect this had on the evolution of the brain. A chapter a day is too slow. I will continue and will try to maintain a rate of at least 2 chapters/day.

Chapter 3. The Birth of an Alphabet and Socrates' Protests

• Wolf identifies two major questions regarding the development of the brain for reading: "what makes up an alphabet and what separates it from the vestiges of a previous syllabary, or logosyllabary? ... are there significant intellectual resources unique to the alphabet-reading brain?" [p. 52]

  I may be missing something, but I don't find these two questions that important.

• Recall (see top of this set of notes) that in addition to the ideas of symbolic representation and communication at a distance, was the idea of a sound-symbol correspondence. This led to "the development of a writing system that requires only a limited number of signs to convey the entire repetoire of sounds in a language. Through a reduction in the the signs to be learned ... achieve the advantages that come from cognitive efficiency and a more economical use of memory and effort in reading and writing." [p. 54]
  
  
• "Cognitive efficiency depends on ... the ability of the specialized regions [of the brain] to reach a speed that is almost automatic. [p.54]
  
  
• "What distinguished our ancestors in ancient Greece from us was the great value the Greeks placed on an oral culture and memory." [p. 58]
  
  
• Wolf describes the debate on the relationship of the Greek alphabet to the Phoenician alphabet.
  
  
• Wolf focuses on the second question: Does the alphabet build a different brain?
  • alphabet-based systems, because of the smaller set of symbols, lead to cortical efficiency
  • cortical efficiency (i.e. speed) leads to a higher level of novel thought by more people which lead to a spiral of increasingly sophisticated writing
    
    
• Socrates was concerned that an emphasis on reading and writing would lead to a loss in our ability to remember. This does appear to be true. Certainly there are few today that have a verbatim memory of many poems or stories.

  Once again, I may be missing something important in this chapter. I do agree that alphabet-based systems have many advantages and that there is a form of cultural spiralling "up" between writing and reading. I am looking forward to the next section of three chapters on "How the Brain Learns to Read Over Time", which is about young children learning to read. For me, this will be the heart of the book.

Tags: psychology, reading