Reading: ventral route x dorsal stream (General discussion) Language Learning Forum

Reading: ventral route x dorsal stream
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Expugnator
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Message 1 of 12

23 February 2015 at 8:17pm | IP Logged

DISCLAIMER: Sorry if this has been discussed before. Feel free to point me to the previous thread(s).

Last weekend I was reading from the book Imagine: how creativity works by Jonah Lehrer and the author mentioned a concept by the neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. I'm quoting from the book as I didn't get to Stanislas Dehaene's work:

Quote:

Why is it so important to get some distance from one’s prose? Stanislas Dehaene, a neuroscientist at the College de France in Paris, has helped illuminate the neural anatomy of reading and editing. It turns out that the brain contains two distinct pathways for making sense of words, each of which is activated in a different context. One pathway is known as the ventral route, and it’s direct and efficient, accounting for the vast majority of our literacy. The process is straightforward: You see a group of letters, convert those letters into a word, and then directly grasp the word’s semantic meaning. According to Dehaene, this ventral pathway isturned on by “routinized, familiar passages” of prose and relies on a bit of cortex known as the visual word form area (VWFA). When reading a simple sentence or a paragraph full of clichés, you’re almost certainly relying on this ventral neural highway. As a result, the act of reading seems effortless and easy. You don’t have to think about the words on the page.

But the ventral route is not the only way to read. The second reading pathway — known as the dorsal stream — is turned on whenever you’re forced to pay conscious attention to a sentence, perhaps because of an obscure word, an awkward subclause, or bad handwriting. (In his experiments, Dehaene activates this pathway by rotating the letters or filling the prose with errant punctuation.) Although scientists had previously assumed that the dorsal route ceased to be active once an individual learns how to read, Dehaene’s research demonstrates that even literate adults are still occasionally forced to make sense of texts. Once that happens, they become more conscious of the words on the page.

Even though the author is concerned with creativity, this excerpt led me to think immediately about language learning through extensive reading and my terrible results last year. I believe most of my reading happens through the ventral route even when I'm supposed to be reading consciously in order to learn a foreign language. It also happens that when I try to activate the dorsal route I lose focus after a while - which can be longer or shorter depending on my level on that language. Sometimes even when I'm doing true parallel reading - the same paragraph in L2 then in L1 - I am still using the ventral route and thus retaining little from what I read, either content or language formality (perhaps enough from content to keep myself interested, though). To this extent, this comparison/concept has been really insightful.

What do you people think? Is this conceptualization valid? Do you experience it similarly?
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Ezy Ryder
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Message 2 of 12

23 February 2015 at 9:05pm | IP Logged

I've noticed sometimes I can read with my attention dropping to the point where I need to
look for the last line in which I actually "listened" to what I was reading. Only
in English and Polish, though.
But even in Chinese, every now and then when I'll try to read something a bit... less
slowly, at some point I'll notice I've misread a character which looks similar to another
one. And I have to pay special attention to its radicals, and try to recall my
mnemonic/story.
However, I'm not sure if that means you're benefiting less from reading. I've acquired my
native language's and English orthography, punctuation, and to a lesser extent grammar
(none of which I'm perfect at, of course) mainly through reading, without trying to put
special attention into what I'm reading, how it's spelt, etc.

Edited by Ezy Ryder on 23 February 2015 at 9:06pm
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luke
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Message 3 of 12

23 February 2015 at 9:16pm | IP Logged

What I read into the quote is how it might apply to the discussion in the B2 to C2 thread.

It seems to me to get to C2, which implies, among other things, very few grammatical errors and an ease processing and creating new word streams, that one has to have acquired the "very few grammatical errors" somehow. It could have started with always hearing correct input and really paying attention. It could have been learned by doing drills until habituated. One way or another, it has to have gone "ventral".

If some bad grammatical habits have gone ventral on the learner, they need a great tutor like s_allard, or patience and persistence with FSI drills, or the gift of "noticing", which some colossal inputers have.

Edited by luke on 23 February 2015 at 9:21pm
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patrickwilken
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Message 4 of 12

23 February 2015 at 9:44pm | IP Logged

I had some interactions with Dehaene a few years ago and was seriously one of the most intelligent focussed people I have ever met. True genius.

I have no idea how to interpret the dorsal/ventral distinction mentioned by Lehrer though, and how that relates to learning.

In vision input goes from the eyes to various parts of the brain. By far the biggest output from the retina goes to area V1 which is at the back of the brain, where information goes through a number of processing steps as it moves forward (so you go from simple wavelength information, to colour, to shadows, to shapes, and eventually to memories/meaning etc).

A certain point this processing pathway seems to split into to two, one the ventral stream, tends towards information about shapes/memory and seems to be associated with conscious perception. The other pathway, the dorsal stream, seems to be associated with motor processing (hand/eye movements etc).

If you recognise a coffee cup on your desk, that's processing occurring in the ventral stream; as you reach for the cup the precise shape your hand makes in response to the visual information is processed in the dorsal stream.

So it's probably not surprising that the ventral stream processes the shape of letters/words. I guess it makes sense that the dorsal stream might be turned on more when trying to read difficult to read letters etc, but I am not sure how this relates to creativity.

I also don't see the connection between intensive versus extensive reading (i.e, using or not using a dictionary).

Edited by patrickwilken on 23 February 2015 at 9:48pm
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Serpent
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Message 5 of 12

23 February 2015 at 10:15pm | IP Logged

Very interesting. Kinda explains why I sometimes feel like I learn more when reading a tweet that flashes for a few seconds and disappears, or when reading in the shower/with poor lighting/with diacritics messed up.

@patrickwilken, some consider reading with a popup dictionary as being in between the intensive and extensive. classic intensive reading also involves thinking of every new grammar structure you encounter, being able to tell the case/gender/tense/etc and thinking of them explicitly when you can't, noticing the unusual wording even if you understand it etc.
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patrickwilken
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Message 6 of 12

23 February 2015 at 10:30pm | IP Logged

Serpent wrote:

@patrickwilken, some consider reading with a popup dictionary as being in between the intensive and extensive. classic intensive reading also involves thinking of every new grammar structure you encounter, being able to tell the case/gender/tense/etc and thinking of them explicitly when you can't, noticing the unusual wording even if you understand it etc.

OK. Sure. That sounds very intensive.
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kujichagulia
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Message 7 of 12

24 February 2015 at 1:30am | IP Logged

@Serpent - reading in the shower? That's dedication! I want to see that!

Well... I don't want to see that... I mean, I don't want to see you... I should shut up before I get into trouble.
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Serpent
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Message 8 of 12

24 February 2015 at 3:06am | IP Logged

Haha I could show you, with a swimsuit/bikini on. I've also written about it in my log. The easiest way would be to use a waterproof device, but since I didn't think of that when getting the devices I have, I just use a simple transparent zipper folder. I got a few but a cheap Erich Krause one works best.

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