| Educational research has long been interdisciplinary, integrating theory and method from multiple fields. Interest is growing in adding neuroscience to the list. Literacy is an educational issue where integrated brain and behavioral research can be relevant to educational practice. In three articles and a concluding chapter, this dissertation describes and addresses conceptual and practical challenges to connecting neuroscience and education, and presents results from a neuroimaging study of phonemic awareness in normal reading children.;In the first article, Part 1 presents conceptual challenges to integrating neuroscience and education. In Parts 2 and 3, literacy research is used as an example of how to accomplish this integration. The primary conclusion is that done correctly, neuroimaging studies of reading-related skills can contribute to improvements in reading pedagogy, particularly for children with reading disorders.;The second article critically reviews neuroimaging studies of normal and low proficiency readers. Behavioral research into reading disorders has provided theoretical bases for study design and interpretation of results. However, most existing imaging work does not fully capitalize on relevant behavioral studies as evidenced in problems with subject selection and task design. Maximizing the potential of future imaging studies of reading to inform educational practice requires these practical problems be addressed.;The third article presents results from an fMRI neuroimaging study of phonemic awareness skills. Previous studies of phonological processing have mostly used adult subjects; the current study employed children who are highly proficient readers. The task was based on a fully normed item from a neuro-psychological test battery, which contrasts with the somewhat ad hoc nature of the tasks often used for fMRI studies. Primary findings are that, consistent with adult findings, in children performing a phonological segmentation and comparison activity in the absence of print, left inferior frontal gyrus, and medial frontal gyrus, play a major role. Additionally, in children, cerebellar and fusiform gyrus showed strong activation. This, along with children's longer reaction times, may reflect that phonemic processing is more effortful, less automatized for children than adults.;The concluding chapter further clarifies how and under what circumstances the fields of neuroscience and education can usefully interact. |
