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Fast ForWord Science
Merges findings from the Science of Reading with research on neuroplasticity to remediate reading and learning difficulties.
Rethinking Root Causes of Reading and Learning Delays
Reading instruction has been frustratingly slow or ineffective for decades. This led to groundbreaking research by Fast ForWord founder Dr. Paula Tallal on the link between language processing and reading.
She then sought out other world-renowned neuroscientists, most notably Dr Michael Merzenich, to explore how to convert her findings into a practical solution for reading.
The result, after many years of painstaking theorizing and testing, was Fast ForWord.
Part 1: Dr. Paula Tallal’s Auditory Temporal Processing Theory
For decades, dyslexia was treated as a visual tracking issue. However, text is a visual form of oral language. Dr. Paula Tallal posited that the issue was not how an individual sees the text, but rather how well the word was heard and processed in auditory memory.
Her research proved this by demonstrating an almost perfect correlation between how well a child sequences sounds and their reading ability. If language processing is weak, letter sounds within words are not accurately heard in auditory word memory. And so there is no match when that word is seen in a text format.
Temporal processing refers to the brain’s ability to perceive, analyze, and organize changing sounds, e.g., hearing that /br/ starts with /b/ and changes to /r/. If a child’s brain struggles to distinguish these phonemes, reading will be a struggle.
Boosting processing to boost reading. This finding opened a way to help struggling readers. Langauge processing is a cognitive skill that can be improved with the right stimulation and exercices. Improved temporal processing leads directly to improved learning and reading efficiency.
In fact, auditory temporal processing delays impact more than just reading. We use language to listen in class, to communicate, and to think. Improved language processing helps learning efficiency in its many forms.
Dr. Tallal Video on Temporal Processing
The 30 Million Word Gap
Research consistently demonstrates that the early linguistic environment is a primary driver of brain development. Cognitive foundations are built in the first four years of life, making language exposure – everyday conversations, being read to, listening to others – the “fuel” for cognitive skill growth.
- Studies published in Nature Neuroscience indicate that environmental factors associated with poverty—including stress and nutritional disparities—correlate with reduced cortical surface area in children’s brains, impacting cognitive and reading performance.
- The “Word Gap”: Landmark research (Hart & Risley) revealed a 30-million-word exposure gap by age four between children in professional households versus those in lower-income homes. This reduced language stimulation delays foundational reading and comprehension skills.
- The Matthew Effect: Educational success is cumulative. Children who start with strong language skills progress faster (“the rich get richer”), while those who struggle early often experience a cycle of failure that discourages future learning, causing gaps to widen over time.
Not mentioned in these studies is the impact of not hearing English at birth. Adopted children or ESL children who don’t hear English at home are also at risk.
The Takeaway: The best response to at-risk children is early intervention. At a minimum, adding more language stimulation to a child’s day, and preferably, seeking an intervention like Fast ForWord software, which has several intense language stimulation exercises.
Part 2: Dr. Michael Merzenich’s Neuroplasticity Principles
About 50 years ago, it was discovered that the brain (and so learning) is not fixed. It functions like a muscle that can be physically reshaped through targeted exercise. To coax the brain into building new capabilities, Dr. Merzenich inserted five neuroscience principles into the exercises:
- Intensity & Frequency: Repetitive, adaptive exercises that challenge the brain to progress to higher function each day.
- Tiny Steps: The brain needs tiny steps to progress to higher-order functions without hitting a wall.
- Cognitive Loading: Forcing the brain to automate processing by providing multiple tasks. Automaticity is the key to learning efficiency.
- Dopamine Rewards: Dopamine is the brain’s glue; it’s how ti locks in gains. Gamified audio and visual feedback in Fast ForWord triggers dopamine releases as new abilities are achieved.
See the science in action for yourself. Request a demo.
“In just 2 months with Gemm Learning, his reading confidence has soared so much that he is no longer resistant to reading and looks forward to his reading time. A light bulb has been turned on for him.”
BRAIN PLASTICITY 101
Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to change and adapt. Just as the body self-heals, the brain self-organizes. It constantly prunes cells and connections for skills we no longer use. And adds new cells to parts of the body that need more, for example, to the playing hand of an individual learning the guitar.
Numerous experiments on how the brain self-heals to recover from strokes and brain injury, including those by Fast ForWord founder Dr. Michael Merzenich, made the existence of brain plasticity accepted science in the 1990s.
This discovery upends conventional approaches to learning. It means learning isn’t fixed! Instead of constantly teaching around disabilities, a much quicker solution is to tap into neuroplasticity to change how the brain learns.
Why Automaticity Is So Important
The human brain can only focus on one major task at a time: it can either concentrate on decoding words or on understanding those words – taking them into working memory, comparing the text to prior knowledge, and thinking about the implications of the text – comprehension.
And so, at a bare minimum, the only way for your child to have the mental bandwidth to comprehend efficiently is for reading to be automatic and subconscious.
Fast ForWord Builds Automaticity In Several Ways
Fast ForWord improves processing speed and accuracy, enabling automatic decoding.
Once these foundational steps become fast, accurate, and fully automatic, they free up valuable mental space for what reading is actually about: comprehension, critical reasoning, and learning confidence.
Then it uses cognitive-loading exercises: simple analytical multiple-choice questions that push lower-level decoding into the subconscious, helping the brain get into the habit of automating reading.
“He was just re-tested, and there are no longer any signs of ADD or dyslexia. He is doing really well in his new school. I believe in life there are things where you get more than you pay for and things where you get less and Gemm Learning is definitely one of those things where you get more.”
“She has just continued to do an amazing job. We’re so thankful for the program. It has truly changed our lives. She had all A’s and I believe one B for this last year in 5th grade. I can’t begin to thank you enough for giving us hope and a solution! I continue to tell everyone I can about the Gemm program!”
Fast ForWord Science – How It Works
The core technology behind Fast ForWord draws from different parts of science to profoundly change how students learn.
1. The FoundationAL Science
Neuroplasticity & Language-Reading Link
Learning is not fixed. The brain changes and adapts, as seen in recovering stroke patients and concert violinists who have an enlarged region of their brain dedicated to their playing hand. Fast ForWord uses neuroscience principles to help the brain of struggling learners recognize the need and change accordingly.
Reading delays are almost always a language processing problem. All the exercises in Fast ForWord draw from what is now called the Science of Reading, working to remediate language and related cognitive delays, and to convert processing efficiency into reading efficiency.
2. The Engine
Adaptive Exercises
The software algorithms lift brain function by presenting high-frequency tasks that progress in microscopic increments with millisecond precision. The system advances with correct responses and retreats on consecutive errors, keeping students in their optimal “zone of proximal development”— challenged but not frustrated.
3. Staying Power
Engagement – Rewards
Our programs are a 4-8 month journey for most students. The suite of programs in Fast ForWord, as well as the exercises, is designed with that level of frequency in mind. Each exercise has an interactive, computer-game feel with reward animations and audio feedback. Changing the brain is equivalent to aerobic exercise; the harder the workout, the faster the progress. The game feel helps the student stay engaged and leaning in aerobically for the 30-minute session.
4. LOCKING IN GAINS
Dopamine Rewards
Dopamine is the brain’s glue. Its release is the equivalent of melting new neural pathways and binds them together. Neurons that fire together, wire together. Fast ForWord is built around creating successful sequences that activate new neural pathways (and new brain function) followed by animated rewards that create dopamine to lock in the gains. Dopamine is a chemical messenger in the brain that not only brings pleasure but also drives motivation and anticipation of reward, a key factor in getting the student to the computer the next day.
5. ResultS
Learning and Reading Efficiency
Fast ForWord trains distinct domains—processing, working memory, attention, and sequencing—concurrently and individually. Improvements in core auditory processing speed yield significant downstream benefits in language and reading comprehension, and learning efficiency.
Dr. Paula Tallal’s Cognitive Research
Reading Delays Are a Language Problem; Instruction Isn’t Always The Answer
Fast ForWord co-founder, Dr. Paula Tallal, often talks (including to Congress) about misconceptions about the dyslexia diagnosis. Dyslexia is widely considered specifically a visual problem. However, several lines of research are converging on the conclusion that for many students, dyslexia is not an isolated reading difficulty but a symptom of a more general language deficit, a language processing problem.
Therefore, teachers who attempt to treat dyslexia solely through intensive reading instruction may be destined to fail, as they do not address the underlying language issues.
To explain why reading difficulties do not necessarily begin as reading difficulties, Tallal points out that several more general language skills constitute essential ingredients for literacy – students cannot learn to read in a language until they have already developed the ability to use that language fluently and automatically.
More specifically, research has found that skills like accurately processing sounds in a split second and distinguishing between subtly different sounds are prerequisites for literacy. Tallal’s congressional testimony cited work by Nina Kraus and others that has shown that by testing these skills, researchers can identify infants at high risk for reading difficulties years in advance.
To give a sense of how early the trajectory of atypical language learning can begin, Tallal also mentioned work by April Benasich demonstrating that researchers can predict subsequent language-based learning difficulties in otherwise non-impaired 7-month-old infants simply by looking at how the infants process auditory tones.
It Comes Down To Language Processing Speed
Therefore, Tallal emphasized that many children who learn to read only with great difficulty don’t have a problem with reading itself but rather a problem with auditory processing speed that develops into a problem with language-based learning, which in turn interferes with reading.
In Tallal’s words,
“Listening to and processing ongoing speech is the fastest thing the human brain has to do.”
Children who parse auditory information less quickly have trouble telling apart subtly different sounds and keeping up with what they’re hearing. Tallal explains this difference between those with fast and slow auditory processing using an analogy:
“When it comes to processing (listening to) auditory information, children with language-based learning problems are operating on ‘dial-up’ speed while those with good language skills are operating on ‘high-speed internet.’”