Additional Sources

This is a holding page for readings that may or may not be assigned/referenced in class. I’ll group them loosely by theme; under each heading, resources will appear in reverse chronological order.

I’ll keep adding to this page as the semester progresses. Please feel free to send in others to share with the rest of the class!

On reading, writing, and empathy:

• “What Do Mirror Neurons Do?” (2019)<—a short and easy intro. video

• “This is Your Brain on Communication” (2016)<—TED talk by Uri Hasson, lot of fun graphics to watch

  • “Clicking: How Our Brains Are in Sync” (2018)<—an article on Hasson’s work

• “The Human Mirror Neuron System, Social Control, and Language” (2013)

• “The Mirror Neuron Mechanism and Literary Studies: An Interview with Vittorio Gallese” (2010)

• “Mirror neurons and their function in cognitively understood empathy” (2013)<—not about literacy, but might help put the mirror neuron material into context

• “Cultivating empathy through high-intensity writing practice” (2019)

• “Empathy or Bird Calls: How We Write Matters” (2013)

• “How Reading Fiction Increases Empathy and Encourages Understanding” (2020)

• “Improving empathy of physicians through guided reflective writing” (2012)

• “Early Research Suggests Our Brains Sync Up With Musicians' During a Performance” (2020)

On memory (and memoir):

• “Memory” (2019; episode 1 of The Mind, Explained, on Netflix if you have it)

• “Writing a Memoir Is a Strange Psychological Trip Through Your Past” (2017)***required***

• “Verbal facilitation effects instead of verbal overshadowing in face memory of 4- to 6-year olds” (2016)

• “Structural but not functional neuroplasticity one year after effective cognitive behaviour therapy for social anxiety disorder” (2016)

• Redirect: Changing the Stories We Live By (2015, excerpts from Ch. 1)***required***

• “How Does Your Memory Work?” (2014)<—A BBC spot that walks through the basic steps of memory (encoding—>consolidation—>retrieval)

• “Why Verbalization of Non-Verbal Memory Reduces Recognition Accuracy” (2014)

• “Your Memory is like the Telephone Game” (2012)"<—A news article that speaks to the work of the author of the two articles immediately below***required***

  • “Hippocampal Binding of Novel Information with Dominant Memory Traces Can Support Both Memory Stability and Change” (2014)

  • “Neural Correlates of Reactivation and Retrieval-Induced Distortion” (2012)

• “The Efficacy of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: A Review of Meta-analyses” (2012)

• "Our Storied Lives” (2010)<—An NPR spot on why we turn our lives into stories, and how we use narrative to recover from traumas

• “A picture is worth a thousand lies: Using false photographs to create false childhood memories” (2002)

• “Neural correlates of the episodic encoding of pictures and words” (1998)

On language, literacy, and identity construction:

• Case Study: Howard Engel (writer who lost the ability to read—but could still write):

  • Neurologist Oliver Sacks’s write-up of the case

  • Excerpt from Engel’s own book on the experience: The Man Who Forgot How to Read(2008)

• Excerpt: The Cry of the Gull, Emmanuelle Laborit (1999)

• “After watching this, your brain will not be the same,” TEDx talk by brain researcher Lara Boyd

On language development and “universal grammar” (or not):

• “How Language Shapes Thought” (2020)<—a longer lecture by Lera Boroditsky

• “ Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language” (2013)<—a counterargument to the work that Boroditsky and others are doing re: language/worldview differences; provides a helpful check on/nuance for the constraints involved with language/worldview studies

  • It might also be worth watching this same speaker, John McWhorter, giving a TED Talk on “4 reasons to learn a new language” (2016)

• “The myth of language universals: Language diversity and its importance for cognitive science” (2009)

• “Broca’s area and the language instinct” (2003)

• Review of Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct (1995/1994)

On bilingual literacies, and also related dyslexias:

• “The Myths and Truths of Dyslexia in Different Writing Systems” (2015)

• “Writing Affects the Brain Network of Reading in Chinese” (2013)

• “Developmental dyslexia in Chinese and English populations: dissociating the effect of dyslexia from language differences” (2010)

• “It's all Chinese to me: Dyslexia has big differences in English and Chinese” (2009)

On “word poverty” and related issues:

• “Effects of Early Language Deprivation on Brain Connectivity: Language Pathways in Deaf Native and Late First-Language Learners of American Sign Language” (2019)

• “How books in adolescence enhance adult literacy, numeracy and technology skills in 31 societies” (2019)

• “What you don’t know can hurt you: The risk of language deprivation by impairing sign language development in deaf children” (2018)

• “Language learning, socioeconomic status, and child-directed speech” (2016)

• “Key to Vocabulary Gap Is Quality of Conversation, Not Dearth of Words” (2015)

• “The Right to Language” (2013)

• “Going Big” (2008)<—a total upper of a listen; the relevant parts are the Prologue and Part I: Harlem Renaissance

On the shift to the digital reading/writing brain, etc.:

• “Neurological Divide: An fMRI Study of Prose and Code Writing” (2020)

  • Related research, as collated by Yu Huang (one of the authors of the presentation above)

• “To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language” (2020)

• “Building Deep Reading Brains in a Digital World” (2020)<—lecture by Maryanne Wolf

• “Building a Biliterate Brain” (2018)<—excerpts from Wolf’s follow-up book after Proust and the Squid

• “Differentiation of Hemodynamic Responses of the Brain with Typing and Writing” (2015)

• “Neuroimaging correlates of handwriting quality as children learn to read and write” (2014)

“Write to read: The brain’s universal reading and writing network” (2013)

On literacy and nature:

• ”Ecopsychology: How Immersion in Nature Benefits Your Health” (2020)

• ”Reading In and Through Nature: An Outdoor Pedagogy for Reading Literature” (2014)

• “THE ROOTS OF WELLBEING: POSITIVE EFFECTS OF NATURE WRITING” (2020)

• “FINDING HOME: Teaching Nature Writing in the Urban Multicultural Setting” (2000)

Am I miss anything? Feel free to text or email me if you need something else!