Scientific American - The Science of Education: Back to School

The Science of Education

Back to School

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ISBN: 978-1-466824140

How to Build a Better Learner

By Gary Stix

Eight-month-old Lucas Kronmiller has just had the surface of his largely hairless head fitted with a cap of 128 electrodes. A research assistant in front of him is frantically blowing bubbles to entertain him. But Lucas seems calm and content. He has, after all, come here, to the Infancy Studies Laboratory at Rutgers University, repeatedly since he was just four months old, so today is nothing unusual. Helike more than 1,000 other youngsters over the past 15 yearsis helping April A. Benasich and her colleagues to find out whether, even at the earliest age, it is possible to ascertain if a child will go on to experience difficulties in language that will prove a burdensome handicap when first entering elementary school.

Benasich is one of a cadre of researchers employing brain-recording techniques to understand the essential processes that underlie learning. The new science of neuroeducation seeks the answers to questions that have always perplexed cognitive psychologists and pedagogues.

How, for instance, does a newborns ability to process sounds and images relate to the childs capacity to learn letters and words a few years later? What does a youngsters capacity for staying mentally focused in preschool mean for later academic success? What can educators do to foster childrens social skillsalso vital in the classroom? Such studies can complement the wealth of knowledge established by psychological and educational research programs.

They also promise to offer new ideas, grounded in brain science, for making better learners and for preparing babies and toddlers for reading, writing, arithmetic, and survival in the complex social network of nursery school and beyond. Much of this work focuses on the first years of life and the early grades of elementary school because some studies show that the brain is most able to change at that time.

THE AHA! INSTANT

Benasich studies anomalies in the way the brains of the youngest children perceive sound, a cognitive process fundamental to the understanding of language, which, in turn, forms the basis for reading and writing skills. The former nurse, who went on to earn two doctorates, focuses on what she calls the aha! instantan abrupt transition in electrical activity in the brain that signals that something new has been recognized.

Researchers at Benasichs lab in Newark, N.J., expose Lucas and other infants to tones of a certain frequency and duration. They then record a change in the electrical signals generated in the brain when a different frequency is played. Typically the electroencephalographic (EEG) trace peaks downward in response to the changeindicating that the brain essentially says, Yes, something has changed; a delay in the response time to the different tones means that the brain has not detected the new sound quickly enough. The research has found that this pattern of sluggish electrical activity at six months can predict language issues at three to five years of age. Differences in activity that persist during the toddler and preschool years can foretell problems in development of the brain circuitry that processes the rapid transitions occurring during perception of the basic units of speech. If children fail to hear or process components of speechsay, a da or a paquickly enough as toddlers, they may lag in sounding out written letters or syllables in their head, which could later impede fluency in reading. These recent findings offer more rigorous confirmation of other research by Benasich showing that children who encounter early problems in processing these sounds test poorly on psychological tests of language eight or nine years later.

If Benasich and others can diagnose future language problems in infants, they may be able to correct them by exploiting the inherent plasticity of the developing brainits capacity to change in response to new experiences. They may even be able to improve basic functioning for an infant whose brain is developing normally. The easiest time to make sure that the brain is getting set up in a way thats optimal for learning may be in the first part of the first year, she says.

Games, even in the crib, could be one answer. Benasich and her team have devised a game that trains a baby to react to a change in tone by turning the head or shifting the eyes (detected with a tracking sensor). When the movement occurs, a video snippet plays, a reward for good effort. In a preliminary study reported late last year, this brain training for babies, practiced over a period of weeks, enabled a group of 15 healthy infants to react more quickly to tones than a control group did. Benasich hopes that her research will confirm that the game might also assist infants impaired in processing these sounds to respond more quickly. She has started to confer with a toy developer interested in creating a mobile that could be placed on the side of a crib at home to train infants in perception of rapid sound sequences.

THE NUMBER SENSE

Flexing cognitive muscles early on may also help infants tune rudimentary math skills. Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, is a leader in the field of numerical cognition who has tried to develop ways to help children with early math difficulties. Babies have some capability of recognizing numbers from birth. When the skill is not in place from the beginning, Dehaene says, a child may later have difficulty with arithmetic and higher math. Interventions that build this number sense, as Dehaene calls it, may help the slow learner avoid years of difficulty in math class.