3 ms·

Do we know if this difference is present at birth, or something that shows up as a result of doing more reading, like how the brains of London taxi drivers chan

Do we know if this difference is present at birth, or something that shows up as a result of doing more reading, like how the brains of London taxi drivers changed when they studied for the taxi-driving exam, which meant they had to memorize lots of routes.

citadel_melon 2y ago
I was thinking of the same example for this article. Nature vs nurture arguments often need much more evidence than many can provide.
- philipov 2y ago
  Nature vs Nurture arguments always suffer from a reductionism problem by assuming there's a dichotomy between the two, which owes its origin to a feeling of exceptionalism that separates anything Human from anything Natural. In fact, nurture is a subcategory of nature, and there is a complex intertwined relationship between genetic and cultural heredity. Trying to reduce it to a debate between one or the other will poison one's understanding before even getting started.
WalterBright 2y ago
I know that 4 years of college rewired my brain.
smeej 2y ago
The part where it talked about how the brain changes when people practice reading more made the title and first paragraphs seem like they have the causation exactly backward. It sounded like they were saying "people are good at reading because they have different brains," implying some sort of unfair advantage, rather than that people who read a lot develop different regions of their brains than people who don't. I'm surprised by the number of adults I've worked with who had graduate degrees and yet could not read a paragraph out loud on the spot and sound natural. I found out most of the reason I was having so much trouble communicating with them was because almost all our communication was in writing, and they couldn't read fluently. It's hard for me to imagine completing, like, 5th grade without being able to read well, so it's a testament to their fierce determination that they'd been working around that challenge at such high levels!
- feoren 2y ago
  > read a paragraph out loud on the spot and sound natural As someone who reads aloud a lot, I contend that this is a subtly different process than simply reading quietly on your own, and something that must be practiced. You need to set up a "reading system" and a "speaking system" and have them operate independently, like a drummer doing a polyrhythm or like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. You also have to throttle your "reading system" to a slower pace than is natural to fluent readers reading silently. They say that poorer readers "sub-vocalize" which limits their reading speed -- well, fully vocalizing does too. All this to say that you can't conclude someone is a poor reader just because they can't read aloud naturally; nor even can you conclude that someone good at reading aloud is a particularly great silent reader.
  - jwiz 2y ago
    In grade school when we read aloud (taking turns in class), I would be able to read my section out loud, but have no idea what it said until I went back and "really" read it. When I started reading out loud to my son, decades later, I finally learned how to "really" read at the same time as reading out loud. I also learned how to read ahead to see who was going to talk next so that I could do the voices properly. (Discworld books are great for this, because his writing really helps you know how to pronounce the dialog.)
- hollandheese 2y ago
  >I'm surprised by the number of adults I've worked with who had graduate degrees and yet could not read a paragraph out loud on the spot and sound natural It's hard to shift gears like that. I can read vastly faster than I can speak so it can be difficult to coordinate the two on the spot. Most reading people do is silent reading, so this shouldn't necessarily be that surprising.
  - smeej 2y ago
    I also read silently vastly faster than I can speak (~1100 vs 150 wpm), but I can as easily read slowly enough to speak what I'm reading fluently. When I would hop on a call with these people and ask them to summarize what they thought my message said, they weren't close on that either, so I'm pretty sure these people actually were not reading fluently.

citadel_melon 2y ago

I was thinking of the same example for this article. Nature vs nurture arguments often need much more evidence than many can provide.

philipov 2y ago
Nature vs Nurture arguments always suffer from a reductionism problem by assuming there's a dichotomy between the two, which owes its origin to a feeling of exceptionalism that separates anything Human from anything Natural. In fact, nurture is a subcategory of nature, and there is a complex intertwined relationship between genetic and cultural heredity. Trying to reduce it to a debate between one or the other will poison one's understanding before even getting started.

WalterBright 2y ago

I know that 4 years of college rewired my brain.

smeej 2y ago

The part where it talked about how the brain changes when people practice reading more made the title and first paragraphs seem like they have the causation exactly backward. It sounded like they were saying "people are good at reading because they have different brains," implying some sort of unfair advantage, rather than that people who read a lot develop different regions of their brains than people who don't. I'm surprised by the number of adults I've worked with who had graduate degrees and yet could not read a paragraph out loud on the spot and sound natural. I found out most of the reason I was having so much trouble communicating with them was because almost all our communication was in writing, and they couldn't read fluently. It's hard for me to imagine completing, like, 5th grade without being able to read well, so it's a testament to their fierce determination that they'd been working around that challenge at such high levels!

feoren 2y ago
> read a paragraph out loud on the spot and sound natural As someone who reads aloud a lot, I contend that this is a subtly different process than simply reading quietly on your own, and something that must be practiced. You need to set up a "reading system" and a "speaking system" and have them operate independently, like a drummer doing a polyrhythm or like patting your head and rubbing your stomach at the same time. You also have to throttle your "reading system" to a slower pace than is natural to fluent readers reading silently. They say that poorer readers "sub-vocalize" which limits their reading speed -- well, fully vocalizing does too. All this to say that you can't conclude someone is a poor reader just because they can't read aloud naturally; nor even can you conclude that someone good at reading aloud is a particularly great silent reader.
- jwiz 2y ago
  In grade school when we read aloud (taking turns in class), I would be able to read my section out loud, but have no idea what it said until I went back and "really" read it. When I started reading out loud to my son, decades later, I finally learned how to "really" read at the same time as reading out loud. I also learned how to read ahead to see who was going to talk next so that I could do the voices properly. (Discworld books are great for this, because his writing really helps you know how to pronounce the dialog.)
hollandheese 2y ago
>I'm surprised by the number of adults I've worked with who had graduate degrees and yet could not read a paragraph out loud on the spot and sound natural It's hard to shift gears like that. I can read vastly faster than I can speak so it can be difficult to coordinate the two on the spot. Most reading people do is silent reading, so this shouldn't necessarily be that surprising.
- smeej 2y ago
  I also read silently vastly faster than I can speak (~1100 vs 150 wpm), but I can as easily read slowly enough to speak what I'm reading fluently. When I would hop on a call with these people and ask them to summarize what they thought my message said, they weren't close on that either, so I'm pretty sure these people actually were not reading fluently.