WORLD OF LEARNING

"Mind Reading" The New York Times 12/31/09

Alison Gopnik's review of Stanislaus Dehaene's Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention. Gopnik indicates that Dehaene writes from a Chomsky/Pinker perspective of "innateness," which I didn't realize from what I've read about the book before. She also indicates that he makes a strong argument for that perspective. One fascinating example that she cites are the shapes of letters: "It turns out that T shapes are important to monkeys, too."

That very "innate" quality of letters, however, Gopnik thinks, might mean Dehaene is not completely convinced that “new cultural inventions can only be acquired insofar as they fit the constraints of our brain architecture.” While monkeys (and children and dyslexics) have trouble with "p," "q," "d" and "b"—primate brains identify them identicallly—most of us learn to distinguish them. Indeed, we have an "extraordinary ability to 'mirror-read' and 'mirror-write.'"

This back-and-forth type of brain investigation, which tries to balance what we're given with what we make of it, really intrigues me. How structured are our brains? How flexible are our brains?