DOCUMENTS

Fernandes, T. & Kolinsky, R (Eds.) Special issue of Frontiers in Developmental Psychology, “The impact of learning to read on visual processing” . Also published as Frontiers ebook: Fernandes, T. & Kolinsky, R. (2016), Eds. “The impact of learning to read on visual processing”. Lausanne: Frontiers Media. doi: 10.3389/978-2-88919-716-3.

Reading is at the interface between the vision and spoken language domains. An emergent bulk of research indicates that learning to read strongly impacts on non-linguistic visual object processing, both at the behavioral level (e.g., on mirror image processing – enantiomorphy–) and at the brain level (e.g., inducing top-down effects as well as neural competition effects). Yet, many questions regarding the exact nature, locus, and consequences of these effects remain hitherto unanswered.
The current Special Topic aims at contributing to the understanding of how such a cultural activity as reading might modulate visual processing by providing a landmark forum in which researchers define the state of the art and future directions on this issue.

Gabriel, R., Morais, J., & Kolinsky, R. (2016). A aprendizagem da leitura e suas implicações sobre a memória e a cognição. [Reading acquisition and its implications on memory and cognition]. Ilha do Desterro, 69(1), 61-78. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2016v69n1p61. Can learning to read change the information process and expand the storage capacity of the human brain? The purpose of this article is to review and to discuss models of memory (working memory, short term and long term memory) in their relation to language, as well as the possible cognitive changes prompted by literacy. By reviewing models of memory and executive functions, we aim at identifying questions that have promoted theoretical evolution, as well as the matching and disagreement in the concepts available in the area. Differences in knowledge processing and storage in literates and illiterates are highlighted, taking into account behavioral and brain imaging data. The data suggest that literacy alters the way in which linguistic knowledge is stored and processed by bursting the refinement of the visual and auditory perceptual systems, necessary to the grapheme-phoneme association.

Kolinsky, R., Demoulin, C., & Morais, J. (in press). Les effets de l’acquisition de l’écrit sur le traitement du langage, la mémorisation et la connaissance verbale. Ed. SOLAL – DE BOECK.

Li, F., Jiang, S., Guo, X., Yang, Z, & Dienes, Z. (2013). The nature of the memory buffer in implicit learning: Learning Chinese tonal symmetries. Consciousness and Cognition 22, 920-930


Previous research has established that people can implicitly learn chunks, which (in terms of formal language theory) do not require a memory buffer to process. The present study explores the implicit learning of nonlocal dependencies generated by higher than finite state grammars, specifically, Chinese tonal retrogrades (i.e. centre embeddings generated from a context-free grammar) and inversions (i.e. cross-serial dependencies generated from a mildly context-sensitive grammar), which do require buffers (for example, last in-first out and first in-first out, respectively). People were asked to listen to and memorize artificial poetry instantiating one of the two grammars; after this training phase, people were informed of the existence of rules and asked to classify new poems, while providing attributions of the basis of their judgments. People acquired unconscious structural knowledge of both tonal retrogrades and inversions. Moreover, inversions were implicitly learnt more easily than retrogrades constraining the nature of the memory buffer in computational models of implicit learning.

Although meditation and hypnosis appear to be similar, both in skills demanded (e.g., imaginative involvement) and in their use as therapies, this chapter argues that the two are essentially different. Whereas mindfulness meditation aims to develop accurate meta-awareness, the hypnotic experience results from a lack of awareness of intentions; hypnosis is effectively a form of self-deception. The claim is supported by reviewing evidence that (a) meditators are not very hypnotizable; (b) highly hypnotizable people become aware of their intentions especially late while meditators have awareness
especially early; and (c) meditators show particularly strong intentional binding but highly hypnotizable people do not. We suggest that one path to high hypnotizability is hypofrontality.