Is reading learning? Are the higher cognitive aspects of reading really just learning and concentration? Are the cognitive problems caused by brain injury solely learning issues and not specifically related to reading?
If it’s solely a learning issue, then logically I would have the same kind of issue with any kind of learning that I do with reading. If learning is the issue, then the modality of learning should have no impact on the outcome. So let’s compare my reading with my learning from a time years ago before my reading comprehension was restored.
When my physiotherapist taught me a new exercise, he demonstrated it, guided my movements, observed my physical motions, and countered any mistakes. I had no problems learning new exercises. Now, you could say muscle memory is not the same as mental memory, that learning a physical movement requires different kinds of cognition, thus you cannot compare it to reading. Yet, after my brain injury, for well over a decade, when I walked, it took conscious thought to walk. On the outside, I may have looked like I was walking normally, but on the inside of my head, I was telling myself to keep moving, to move my right leg forward, to continue the forward motion, to move back to the center of the sidewalk. I had to remember cognitively how to walk so that I could tell myself how to do it. Muscle memory comes after conscious memory. I didn’t realize how much conscious thinking went into the simple physical act of walking until the day my walking became automatic. Automaticity happens when the brain learns a skill.
So yes, I had to learn physical movements cognitively before they became embedded into muscle memory, and I had to be able to concentrate in order to learn them from my physiotherapist.
No problem on either count.
I will say memory fades after a week or two if I do not do a new exercise after I’ve been taught it. But I don’t believe that that fading time is abnormally short.
But okay, let’s assume physical learning is a different beast from mental; let’s compare reading to learning through spoken language. When my neuro doc told me to tell myself “it’s 2014” when I was having a flashback, I retained that instruction and no matter how many months or weeks or days apart the flashbacks occurred, I recalled that instruction well.
But that’s a simple instruction. I would have retained it if he had written it down for me, no? Hmm. Written instructions I keep in order to read over and over because I do forget them.
What about a complex spoken instruction or question? When my neuro doc asked me a question in the first five or six years of me seeing him, I had trouble retaining it, but that was because I wasn’t paying attention to him but to something else at the time. When I pay full attention, like when he would give me reading homework, which I didn’t write down, I'd remember it. I also had no trouble following his reasoning, learning what he wanted me to learn.
My concentration as measured by objective testing is excellent, much better than a normal person of my age and gender, yet paying attention to someone when they’re talking and being able to hear and comprehend their words is far easier, especially face to face when I can see their lips move and watch their body language, than paying attention to text on a page or screen even using all the strategies I'd been taught and devices that I'd acquired on the advice of psychologists to aid in relaxed, focused attention. That problem is unique to reading ergo it’s not (simply) a concentration and learning issue.
What about flow: do you need to be in flow to learn? No, but you do need to be in flow to escape into a good novel to the point of losing all awareness of your surroundings and bodily needs like hunger. Reading a good novel is not satisfying unless in the flow. I’ve become used to not being able to enter that state of flow when learning, and it doesn't bother me. It does, though, when trying to read good books. Only after I'd learned visualizing and verbalizing language in 2018, regained my reading comprehension cognitive skill, and practiced enough to progress by early 2019 to reading five pages in one go before pausing, did I stop missing not being in flow when reading a good novel.
What about the big picture? The hardest part for me when reading after brain injury was building up the big picture, of adding the fact to visual of concrete details to the concept as I read along so that eventually the entirety of the piece unfolded itself to me and I was able to retain it. Trying to keep hold of what I’ve already read while adding to the facts, visuals, and concepts is taxing. But that’s learning! Isn’t it? Or memory? Or some more complicated cognitive process? When my neuro doc goes into his expository mode, I have had trouble listening for that long. I told him two years into therapy to keep it short. When he does that, the biggest trouble I have trying to remember what he's explaining is his vocabulary and the way he uses words.
I don’t have trouble building up a picture in my mind of what he’s telling me when I can understand his vocabulary. That is language not learning.
I think it’s a false dichotomy to say the higher cognitive functions of reading are just learning and concentration. Yes, learning is involved, and there's no doubt being able to concentrate is essential, but I remain convinced after this adequate thought exercise that the main problem with reading after brain injury remains – reading. I first did this thought experiment in 2015; doing it guided me as I continued to search for an effective way to restore my reading. It confirmed to me that reading is a unique multi-factorial cognitive skill that encompasses the auditory, visual, and language systems as I learned from Lindamood-Bell in 2018 and affirm to myself every time I pick up a book and use my regained reading skills to read pages of it with comprehension.
Copyright ©2015 and 2019 Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy. May not be reprinted or reposted without permission.
