Cognitive neuroscientist Joshua Snell of VU Amsterdam receives a starting grant from the European Research Council (ERC). With this grant, Snell will research one of the oldest puzzles of cognitive neuroscience: how does the brain read?
Understanding how the brain reads has been a puzzle for scientists for more than 150 years. ‘Reading is a complex skill that involves many different cognitive processes, such as attention, memory and language processing,’ says Joshua Snell. ‘To really understand reading, we need to connect these processes.’
Joshua Snell works as an assistant professor in the Department of Cognitive Psychology at VU Amsterdam. He is interested in how the human brain processes language. His research is primarily focused on visual language processing, that is, reading.
The research project that Joshua Snell will carry out with the ERC award is called TAPIR, Tests and Applications of a Peripheral Interference Theory of Reading. This project builds on his previously developed model, PONG, which is about word recognition. Unlike previous theories, which mostly focused on one aspect of reading, PONG is intended to be a comprehensive theory covering all levels of cognitive processing in reading.
The research project is of interest to reading researchers across the globe, says Snell. ‘We have participants read an entire book, while we track their eyes and measure brain activity. In doing so, we will be able to track how visual attention is distributed across the text. We will record this data in a vast, open database.’ With this information, researchers can investigate numerous questions, such as how attention is affected by linguistic complexity, by readers' goals and intentions, and by reading proficiency.
In addition, TAPIR has a practical goal: to improve reading for people with dyslexia. ‘PONG theory suggests that reading problems are caused by diffuse attention, where people are affected by words around the word they are trying to read,’ Snell explains. ‘TAPIR will test a new reading interface that reduces these problems, by making only the word being read clearly visible, while the rest of the text is less noticeable. This could help dyslexic readers in particular. If this works, it not only supports PONG theory but also provides a practical solution to reading problems.’
The ERC, set up by the European Union in 2007, is the premier European funding organisation for excellent frontier research. It funds creative researchers of any nationality and age, to run projects based across Europe. The ERC offers four core grant schemes: Starting Grants, Consolidator Grants, Advanced Grants and Synergy Grants.
