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What is Neural Efficiency?

rsstone74
Jul 9
2 min read

by Rhonda Stone Little Readers Members Only Site Manager


Neural efficiency is a late 20th, early 21st Century concept that is still being studied. Understanding it is the future of efficient and effective learning for virtually every child. Importantly, such learning includes reading development!


A group of 12 international scientists (Dunst et al.) in 2014 explained the "neural efficiency hypothesis" with this simple but remarkable finding:


"...Brighter individuals show lower brain activation than less bright individuals when working on the same cognitive tasks." (Intelligence, Jan. 2014, 42:20-22)


It's a shocking idea: the brains of brighter individuals do not work as hard as those who struggle. The invaluable question for parents: how does neural efficiency develop? As scientists continue to work to figure this out, let's look at how the core ideas of popular reading instruction compare to Read Right methodology, the foundation of Little Readers Members Only methods:

POPULAR READING INSTRUCTION Re: The Science of Reading

READ RIGHT METHODOLOGY for Little Readers Members Only

Adults must explicitly and separately teach children five individual skills associated with reading ability:


  1. Phonemic awareness (Individual speech sounds)


  2. Phonics and decoding (Translating letters on a page to the sounds of speech and figuring out each word separately)


  3. Fluency (oral reading that is efficient)


  4. Vocabulary

    (single word meanings)


  5. Comprehension Strategies (understanding text and retaining information)


As these five "skills" are separately taught, children must figure out for themselves how to make them work together to produce efficient and effective reading ability.

Just like elite performance in sports and music, neural efficiency in reading requires three things:


  1. Explicit instruction in all relevant declarative information. Examples from reading: "b" says buh, the sky is blue, dogs bark, as well as how punctuation contributes to sentence reading. Each is an example of declarable knowledge, which often involves vocabulary (the meanings of single words).


  2. An environment and guidance totally focused on the right end result. This reflects the idea that children must "figure out" the complex process of reading for themselves. But, with Read Right, the objective from the beginning is to produce oral reading that accurately reflects meaning, as expressed through proper pace, emphasis and tone. Thus, full comprehension and oral fluency emerge as a single, cohesive act--not separate skills.

  3. Persistent experimentation until full comprehension and oral fluency are achieved. By design, Read Right's methods guide children to work continuously at improving their own neural efficiency with reading!


Read Right leaps over single word recognition and goes straight to using phonics information strategically to construct meaning in the moment, as reading progresses. Why? Using phonics information strategically to construct sentence meaning is far, FAR more efficient than naming one--word--at--a--time. The methods work because they accurately reflect what the brain needs for the development of efficient and effective reading ability.


Enjoy this 2-minute video of a kindergartner's journey to reading success with Read Right methodology:



 
 
 

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