"If the signature activity of the information age, or the 21st century, is the use of electronic media (Doidge, 2007, p. 291), then perhaps the "signature" child of this age is autistic? If childhood autism is a transitional brain state, then, perhaps, because it is so problematic, childhood autism will force the design of electronic media that are appropriate to the development of the immature visual and aural brain systems, so that children will be able to receive and produce language and relate to others and control attention and hyperactivity and mood by the stimulus of the lighted screen? Maybe the modified autistic child will be "invaluable to the ongoing evolution of the human race?" (Silverman, quoting ICSF neurologist Kirk Wilhelmsen, 2001).
At the crossroads of evolution and technology.
It may be that we are in a transitional period or at the crossroads of evolution and technology which the rise of autism indicates. Brains are being affected and changed by the technology of electronics. Whether brains change in ways that we will regret is uncertain. This book is a plea for maintaining a few basics of human development that have been long-term goals of hominid evolution: the ability to pay sustained attention, to connect emotionally with others (that is, to have what is called a "theory of mind," or to know what another person is thinking), and to speak and be literate. If these evolutionary outcomes remain important to human evolution, we need to protect and preserve them. We can be computer-literate and still be empathetic. We can read a book or write a book or create a sculpture or a painting or a piece of music (all of which require sustained attention), as well as learn to follow the fast presentation of image and text in "screen thinking."
The challenge is protecting fetal and infant and toddler brain development during its early sensory-motor development when systems synchronize and integrate in response to certain kinds of aural, visual, tactile, and olfactory patterns. This can be done. Saving Literacy shows how.
It is critical to research the design of toys and child-directed media to determine the actual enrichment advantages or damage-potential to immature brains, especially in connection with hearing and vision. The irony is that white noise machines, designed to protect adults and children from the onslaught and distraction and interruption of environmental noise, may actually increase the incidence of the intense, 1/f random bursts of noise within the white noise spectrum that may be especially damaging to immature brain systems.
Background information for the Research
TV's, computer monitors, refrigerators operate by electrical signals called radio waves which operate over a wide range of frequencies. Can radio waves damage immature systems? In terms of raster rates in lighted screens, that is, of the refreshing of images, as well as the rate of presentation of information by the actual programs, research has proved that radio waves do cause attentional, emotional, and learning problems. Are there other problems, actual or potential? As for sound waves, a young person can hear sound from about 20 to 20,000 Hertz. For people around the age of 50, the range of hearing is reduced to 100 to 8,000 Hertz. It is certainly possible that (1) radio waves, or (2) sounds <20 Hz or >20,000 Hz, might cause damage to humans (Steven W. Smith, author of The Scientist and Engineer's Guide to Digital Signal Processing, YEAR, email correspondence 3/15/08) Smith writes, "Anything a human can hear is a sound wave between 20 and 20,000 Hertz. This can be broken into two general types, "broad band" and "narrow band." A good example of broad band is "white noise", much like hitting all of the keys on a piano at once. In contrast, narrow band is an individual tone, such as hitting an individual piano key. Static on the radio and rain drops hitting the roof are examples of white noise. Speech and music are mainly narrow band. Devices such as computers, TV's and kitchen appliances generate a combination of the two.
Can exposure to excessive white noise disrupt normal brain development? ... White noise entering the ears will presumably result in highly randomized neural firing in the auditory sections of the brain. It's certainly conceivable that this could cause problems with the developing brain. On the other hand, it's harder to believe that limited exposure to white noise is harmful, considering that there are many sources of white noise in nature --- rain, rivers, wind, etc.
Parents and children need the following research.
- Research with frequencies and wavelengths of analog and digital vision and sound production in television, and computers, as well as in dish antennae and other receivers/transponders, including DVD's and VCR's.
Research must be conducted to determine which frequencies retard or damage normal development in fetal and infant and toddler brains. Television and dish antennas produce noise which is considered negligible to adults. But is it negligible to infants' and toddlers' brains. Do some kinds of electronic noise block or scramble immature brain signaling systems?
- Research with Motherese, infant cooing and laughter, infant babbling and toddler scribbling as integrative, cohering, bilateral brain organizers for speech and literacy (or as Strange Attractors)
Modeling the research on maternal speech, and infants' spontaneous cooing, babbling, laughter, as these activities relate to each other as synchronizers and accelerators of shared brain activity, and research with scribbling and drawing should be conducted to determine whether the same purpose is served in terms of the development of language and literacy.
It is likely that all these activities in infants and toddlers demonstrate bilateral excitation in both hand areas of the motor cortex, demonstrating the usefulness of all these activities as neural organizers for attention, connection, language and literacy. It is likely that there is stronger right brain excitation than left brain excitation for early scribbling--- with right brain excitation more pronounced in male children. Female brains are more balanced bilaterally, so should show stronger bilateral excitation in the hand areas of the motor cortex during early speech production, as well as during early mark-making.
- Research with babbling and scribbling as integrative, cohering, bilateral brain organizers for speech and literacy.
An experiment could be set up to test whether spontaneous speech and intentional scribbling/drawing in, say, three year olds, demonstrates bilateral excitation in both hand areas of the motor cortex. I would predict stronger right brain excitation than left brain excitation at this age--- with right brain excitation much more pronounced in male children. Female brains are more balanced bilaterally, so should show stronger bilateral excitation in the hand areas of the motor cortex during early speech production, as well as during early mark-making.
- Research in AI, or artificial intelligence to model pre-verbal, scribbling thinking
To model human intelligence, AI needs to build a robot with eyes and hands which scribbles and draws and reads its scribbles and drawings, creating internal models from them. Of course, there is a catch; the child's scribbles and drawings are driven by neural shapes of thought which are already internal as the sensory motor patterns of a biological organism bent on movement, connection and communication using emotional SEEK and PLAY circuitry. This, as I see it, is the conundrum for modeling an intelligent system that uses languages and literacies as the human brain uses them. It has to be able to scribble and draw, but it can only scribble and draw if its computer/brain is already programmed correctly, which would mean that the programmer had tapped into the algorithms responsible for the neural shapes of young children's pre-verbal, scribbling thought.
Still, if humankind is becoming technological as a whole, then, since ontogeny both recapitulates and modifies phylogeny (Falk, in correspondence, Dec. 2003), the pressure on the child's brain to adapt will bring about changes in line with the requirements of technology for its kind of motility, its kind of adhesion, its kind of transduction. Clearly, technology requires quick eyes and quick fingers. It needs the rest of the body only as a support system for the hands/eyes/brain as these three entities interact with a keyboard, a lighted screen projecting information via certain raster rates and colors determined by certain software.
If the emotions required for interaction with certain computer games are hyper-alertness to danger and triumphal killer-rage, then these emotions will be selected for as biologically useful. Still, if the conservation of energy remains a cellular requirement, and if the biological system is squandering energy emotionally by playing such games for long periods of time, while under-utilizing the rest of the body kinetically, then a neurobiological conflict should arise, resulting in biological break-down. This break down will probably neo-bio-techno body/brain systems appropriate to life lived in virtual worlds. Then, the only enemies we kill will be imaginary but, by then, we might be imaginary, too.
- Research in connection with positive emotion
Frederickson writes (p.5) in Kaszniak, "Many positive emotions ...broaden the momentary thought-action repertoire. " Kaszniak writes, " For example, the negative emotions of fear and anxiety involve defensive responses, ...that appear to have evolved to operate very rapidly and automatically, without any necessary conscious processing of the eliciting stimuli," causing Frederickson to speculate "about the different kind of natural selective pressures that may have shaped evolution of cognitive consequences of negative versus positive emotion. Different evolutionary histories would be consistent with the possibility that positive emotion might more likely involve conscious processes in the mediation of its effects on problem-solving and decision. This possibility deserves empirical testing.." (p. 5).
The position on mark-making in this book supports the following idea: natural selective pressures for increased needs for extracting more than surface qualia, or the feelings of what happens (Demasio, 1999), for example, the "x-ray-like" vision expressed in child drawings which show the legs of the man through the side of the boat. This knowledge of the child about things known but hidden puts extra special evolutionary pressure on the tool-using hand and on the eye watching the marks-based action of the hand, encouraging the brain to figure out other ways to represent hidden, but nonetheless true information like quantum mechanics. I call this kind of thinking quidditas or essential whatness-thinking as opposed to qualia, or sensory understanding of the world. Quidditas thinking is marks-based.
- Using the Applied Scribbling/Drawing/Talking/Reading/Writing Program to determine the effects of such developmental, integrated training of the young human visuo/verbal attentional system on emotion, speech, writing and reading of text and other codes, and thinking skills including problem-solving, memory and learning.
Only non-invasive longitudinal studies with the brains of very young children, following these brains through school and out into life, will show the effects of this kind of training with mark-making on emotion, reason and memory.
One thing is certain: by building a grace period into language acquisition programs both at home and at school through a combined scribbling/drawing/talking/writing process, children for whom speech and/or symbol-use is delayed or dysfunctional will find relief, remediation, and even preventative effects (Sheridan, 1989, 1990, 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003). For children without delays or dysfunctions, speech and literacy will unfold as it has evolved to unfold ---- incrementally, starting with babbling and scribbling in a context of accectionate support.
- Future Therapeutic use of a lighted screen designed to be in sync with normal human immature visual systems
In the future, the use of machine vision that matches normal immature human visual oscillatory phases might be used to remediate severe existing neurological disturbances like infantile epilepsy or even to remediate future conditions relating to vision and attention like hyperactivity, dyslexia, and autism.
- Research with rage control
Research around rage-control using training in sustained visual attention and marks of meaning via the Scribbling/Drawing/Talking/Writing program in longitudinal studies with children and adults should clarify the degree to which mark-making, as extensions of the survival seeking system, is capable of moderating rage or even of repairing brain areas (amygdalas) shriveled by the caustic effect of too much cortisol, the stress brain chemical.
To change how we see, our brain chemistry, species-wide, has to change. Because it's hard "to teach an old dog new tricks," it makes sense to start new ways of seeing with the very young. Jaak Panksepp (Affective Neuroscience, 1998) gives us a fine starting point with his analysis of our emotional circuitry: rage, fear, panic, seek, play. By concentrating on SEEK and PLAY as neurochemically positive emotions to nurture, we may be able to grow past antiquated, non-useful drives, needs, feelings and behaviors. We must change how we see and feel before we can change how we act. This means that children's computer games should focus on SEEK and PLAY themes, not on violence, fear, panic, and destruction. young adults is a huge problem. One of the major issues for the 21st century will be how we conduct personal, national and international relations. Rage is surely a counterproductive element in all such relationships. Whether rage at The Self or The Other. We need to focus on the basic emotional drives called SEEK and PLAY. Not on RAGE, PANIC or FEAR. To do so we need the tools to help us know and understand and deal and compromise and relate and empathize. We need peaceable strategies for a global society. Brain science shows that there are no return circuits from Seeking and Playing to Rage, Panic and Fear. The SEEK-ing and PLAY-ing involved in marks (scribbling, drawing, writing) lead us down positive emotional paths as communicators and problem- solvers who use language as a major mode.
Jaak Panksepp, for the use of figure 3.5, page 53, The Major Emotional
Systems," Affective Neuroscience, (c) 1998. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press, Clarendon Street, Oxford, UK.
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