Noted neurologist Dehaene: Content 'betrays a dramatic lack of
knowledge of the scientific literature'
SYRACUSE, N.Y., May 13, 2024
/PRNewswire/ -- The Reading League (TRL), a nonprofit organization
leading the advancement of evidence-aligned reading instruction,
has responded to a recent webinar hosted by the California
Association for Bilingual Education (CABE).
What [the speaker] says is so utterly false
that it betrays a dramatic lack of knowledge of the scientific
literature'
The webinar, titled "Debunking SoR Neuroscience Claims,"
targeted and spread false information to educators and education
professionals, discrediting evidence derived from the science of
reading.
In CABE's April 24 webinar, their
speaker, Dr. Steven Strauss, made
several misleading claims in an attempt to undermine research by
neuroscientists, including world-renowned neuroscientist
Stanislas Dehaene. Dr. Dehaene's
award-winning research investigates the neural bases of human
cognitive functions such as reading, calculation, and language. As
a member of nine academies, including the U.S. National Academy of
Sciences, he is widely recognized for his contributions to
neuroscience. He is also the only person outside U.S. academia to
receive the prestigious Atkinson Prize.
One of the claims made during the webinar attempted to debunk
the use of fMRI technology to study reading. Dr. Strauss posited
that the principles and discoveries within the science of reading
gained from the use of fMRI "are limited to taking pictures of
subjects reading very short pieces of language.
In response to this claim, Dr. Dehaene emphasized that hundreds
of brain-imaging studies have utilized sentences and texts as
stimuli during fMRI. These studies have provided valuable evidence
regarding how brain circuits form and function regardless of what
is being read.
Dr. Dehaene wrote the following response to the CABE
webinar:
"What [the speaker] says is so utterly false that it betrays a
dramatic lack of knowledge of the scientific literature…for more
than 20 years, we and many other researchers have routinely used
sentences and texts as stimuli during functional MRI, both written
and spoken…shown how written and spoken texts activate extremely
similar brain circuits for meaning and used fMRI to dissect the
brain circuits for reading at various levels, from single word
processing to syntactic and semantic integration."
The Reading League supports Dr. Dehaene's response, which
reflects decades of research on how monolingual and multilingual
children learn to read. TRL also stands by its mission to advance
scientific evidence so that educators and stakeholders understand
how to meet the unique needs of EL/EB students, as described on the
EL/EB page of The Reading League Compass. TRL calls for continued
collegial conversations grounded in truth and evidence.
TRL will continue to work collaboratively with communities of
experts who have dedicated themselves to conducting research and
uplifting evidence to address pervasive and persistent
disinformation because it has no place in education.
The Reading League is a national education nonprofit led by
educators and reading experts dedicated to promoting knowledge to
accelerate the global movement toward reading instruction grounded
in science. We aim to increase stakeholder knowledge of the
evidence-aligned approaches to teaching reading and the research
that shows how people learn to read. We train and support educators
and school leaders. By extension, we also serve numerous
stakeholder groups. We believe that all children deserve to learn
to read, and all teachers can learn to teach them. For more
information, please visit thereadingleague.org.
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SOURCE The Reading League