Summary of Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The reading brain is the result of our intellectual evolution, and it has changed over time as we have learned to read new things. It has expanded our capacity to think, feel, and infer, and it has changed how we communicate.
#2 The brain’s ability to learn new things is based on its plastic design, which allows it to make new connections among structures and circuits that were originally devoted to more basic brain processes.
#3 The reading process is a great example of how the human brain has to adapt when things go wrong. It is similar to the study of the squid in earlier neuroscience, as it involves understanding different dimensions in the reading process.
#4 When we read, we are able to pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, and another culture. We never come back the same after reading. Through this exposure, we learn both the commonality and the uniqueness of our own thoughts.

Sujets

• Education
• Subject

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 28 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669369066
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Maryanne Wolf's Proust and the Squid
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The reading brain is the result of our intellectual evolution, and it has changed over time as we have learned to read new things. It has expanded our capacity to think, feel, and infer, and it has changed how we communicate.

#2

The brain’s ability to learn new things is based on its plastic design, which allows it to make new connections among structures and circuits that were originally devoted to more basic brain processes.

#3

The reading process is a great example of how the human brain has to adapt when things go wrong. It is similar to the study of the squid in earlier neuroscience, as it involves understanding different dimensions in the reading process.

#4

When we read, we are able to pass over into the consciousness of another person, another age, and another culture. We never come back the same after reading. Through this exposure, we learn both the commonality and the uniqueness of our own thoughts.

#5

When you read a text, you activate a battery of language and comprehension processes. The richness of your semantic dimension of reading depends on the riches you have already stored. If you apply this finding to the passage from Proust, it means that your executive planning system directed many activities to comprehend what was there and retrieve your personal associations to the text.

#6

All human behaviors are based on multiple cognitive processes, which are based on the rapid integration of information from very specific neurological structures. These processes are programmed in large part by genes.

#7

The first humans to invent writing and numeracy were able to do this by using neuronal recycling. Our brain had three ingenious design principles: the ability to make new connections among older structures, the capacity to form areas of exquisitely precise specialization for recognizing patterns in information, and the ability to learn to recruit and connect information from these areas automatically.

#8

The visual system of the brain is also responsible for recognizing letters and words, which is how we read and write. The combination of several innate capacities allowed our brain to make new pathways between visual areas and those areas serving the cognitive and linguistic processes that are essential to written language.

#9

The third principle is that the neuronal circuits that are created through hundreds or thousands of exposures to letters and words become virtually automatic. These pathways are created through retinotopic organization, object recognition, and the ability to represent highly learned patterns of information in specialized regions.

#10

Reading is a circuitous act that allows the reader to contribute actively to the construction of the information presented. This unique aspect of reading is threatened by the Google universe of our children, which provides instant visual information.

#11

The relationship between readers and text differs across cultures and history. Reading is a way for us to go beyond the specifics of the given to form new thoughts. It reflects and reenacts the brain’s capacity for cognitive breakthroughs.

#12

The alphabetic principle, which represents the idea that each word in spoken language is made up of a finite group of individual sounds, was a revolutionary idea when it was developed. It allowed for the translation of every spoken word into writing, which led to the loss of the rich oral culture that existed before it.

#13

The first time an infant is held and read a story, learning to read begins. The best predictor of later reading is how often an infant is held and read a story during the first five years of life.

#14

The brain changes as a result of reading, and these changes can be seen with the use of new technologies. We can now see what happens if all goes right in the acquisition of reading, as a child moves from decoding a word like cat to the fluent, seemingly effortless comprehension of a feline creature named Mephistopheles.

#15

The brain of a person with dyslexia is still being studied, but what is clear is that they have strengths that could be used to benefit society.

#16

The brain of a person with dyslexia leads us to look both backward to our evolutionary past and forward to the future of our symbolic development. We must be vigilant not to lose the profound generativity of the reading brain, as we add new dimensions to our intellectual repertoire.

#17

The story of reading reflects the sum of a series of cognitive and linguistic breakthroughs that occurred alongside powerful cultural changes. With the second breakthrough came the insight that a system of symbols can be used to communicate across time and space.

#18

The first language spoken on earth was believed to be Phrygian, a language spoken in northwest Anatolia. However, it was proven false when one infant cried out bekos, the Phrygian word for bread.

#19

The birth of modern attempts to learn about the history of writing occurred when cave paintings were discovered that depicted numbers and symbols. The tokens primarily recorded the number of goods bought or sold, but they also promoted both ancient economies and the development of cognitive skills.

#20

When we look at lines that do not contain any meaning, we only activate limited visual areas in the back of the brain. When we see these same lines and interpret them as symbols that contain meaning, we need new pathways.

#21

Symbolization, even for the smallest token, exploits and expands two of the most important features of the human brain: our capacity for specialization and our capacity for making new connections among association areas.