IDeA – project ReAL

Without possessing the important abilities to read and write, an independent participation in social life is difficult. Some children experience great difficulties in learning to read and write. The ReAL project intends to assess children’s developments in acquiring the ability to read and write, over a period of several years. Our work focuses on the different means and strategies the children use when trying to read words and solving maths tasks. They might, for instance, decipher words letter by letter, or use their fingers to count. In order to understand the strategies children use in reading and writing, we intend to use different methods for assessing the processes involved. On the one hand, we will observe the actions the children perform while working on the tasks. On the other hand, the children will be interviewed as to their approaches. The implementation of neurological procedures might finally render such processes visible that cannot be observed from the children’s behavior.
The assessment of brain activities is meant to disclose the brain areas that are active in reading and calculating, and how these areas are networked. The ReAL project will conduct fMRT-experiments to this end recording blood flows in the brain. This method can demonstrate active areas in the brain. In order to find out when exactly something is happening in the brain, additional EEG-experiments will be conducted enabling an assessment of electrical brain activities.

Further information on the IDeA – project ReAL