These findings clearly demonstrate how the cooperative areas of the brain responsible for reading skill are also at work during apparently unrelated activities, such as multiplication, suggest that reading, writing and arithmetic, the foundational skills informally identified as the three Rs, might actually overlap in ways not previously imagined, let alone experimentally validated.

Though the division between literacy and math is commonly reflected in the division between the arts and sciences, the findings suggest that reading, writing and arithmetic, the foundational skills informally identified as the three Rs, might actually overlap in ways not previously imagined, let alone experimentally validated.

«These findings floored me,» said Christopher McNorgan, PhD, the paper’s author and an assistant professor in UB’s Department of Psychology. «They elevate the value and importance of literacy by showing how reading proficiency reaches across domains, guiding how we approach other tasks and solve other problems.

«Reading is everything, and saying so is more than an inspirational slogan. It’s now a definitive research conclusion.»

And it’s a conclusion that was not originally part of McNorgan’s design. He planned to exclusively explore if it was possible to identify children with dyslexia on the basis of how the brain was wired for reading.

«It seemed plausible given the work I had recently finished, which identified a biomarker for ADHD,» said McNorgan, an expert in neuroimaging and computational modeling.

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Materials provided by University at Buffalo. Original written by Bert Gambini. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.