A study of braille reading: 2. Patterns of hand activity in one-handed and two-handed reading

Video recordings of the hands of 24 blind adults reading aloud prose, statistical approximations and scrambled words with either hand alone and with two hands were analysed. Hand activity involved forward scanning movements, regressions and returns to the next line. In two-handed reading, most readers resorted to mixed movement patterns, where a first segment of the line was explored by the left hand alone, a second segment by the two hands conjointly and a third segment by the right hand alone, each hand returning to the line while the other one was reading. In subjects who dissociated the hands to a great extent, the left hand generally started scanning the new line before the right hand had reached the end of the preceding line. This simultaneous disjoint exploration occurred with little slowing down of forward scanning, and involved parallel collection of textual information by the two hands. There were large and reliable individual differences in the relative sizes of the segments explored using the different hand combinations. Hand dissociation was correlated positively with individual reading speed in both two-handed and one-handed reading, and reductions in the degree of contextual constraint induced the adoption of more conjoint patterns of exploration. Total reading time was analyzed into components corresponding to regressions, line transitions and forward scanning. The main part of the gain from two-handed reading resulted in most subjects from savings in line transition time, but the most conjoint readers gained also on forward scanning and on regressions. The lower overall speed of conjoint readers was due not only to longer transition times but also to slower forward scanning and more time spent regressing.     

Creative thinking and brain network development in schoolchildren

Fostering creative minds has always been a premise to ensure adaptation to new challenges of human civilization. While some alternative educational settings (i.e., Montessori) were shown to nurture creative skills, it is unknown how they impact underlying brain mechanisms across the school years. This study assessed creative thinking and resting-state functional connectivity via fMRI in 75 children (4–18 y.o.) enrolled either in Montessori or traditional schools. We found that pedagogy significantly influenced creative performance and underlying brain networks. Replicating past work, Montessori-schooled children showed higher scores on creative thinking tests. Using static functional connectivity analysis, we found that Montessori-schooled children showed decreased within-network functional connectivity of the salience network. Moreover, using dynamic functional connectivity, we found that traditionally-schooled children spent more time in a brain state characterized by high intra-default mode network connectivity. These findings suggest that pedagogy may influence brain networks relevant to creative thinking—particularly the default and salience networks. Further research is needed, like a longitudinal study, to verify these results given the implications for educational practitioners. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWV_5o8wB5g .

Research Highlights

• Most executive jobs are prospected to be obsolete within several decades, so creative skills are seen as essential for the near future.
• School experience has been shown to play a role in creativity development, however, the underlying brain mechanisms remained under-investigated yet.
• Seventy-five 4–18 years-old children, from Montessori or traditional schools, performed a creativity task at the behavioral level, and a 6-min resting-state MR scan.
• We uniquely report preliminary evidence for the impact of pedagogy on functional brain networks.