Sound of Silence

"Mental conversion into sound plays an essential role when we read a word for the first time... Initially, we cannot possibly access its meaning directly, since we have never seen the word spelled out. all we can do is convert it into sound, find that the sound pattern in intelligible, and, through this indirect route, come to understand the new word. Thus sounding is often the only solution when we encounter a new word." ~ Reading in the Brain by Stanislas Dehaene pg 27

" Those only who have attempted to teach children can conceive how extremely difficult it is to fix their attention, or to make them seize the connection of ideas, which it appears to us almost impossible to miss. Children are well occupied in examining external objects, but they must also attend to words as well as things. One of the great difficulties in early instruction arises from the want of words: the pupil very often has acquired the necessary ideas, but they are not associated in his mind with the words which his tutor uses; these words are then to him mere sounds, which suggest no correspondent thoughts." ~Of Tasks by Maria Edgeworth pg. 14

         In the small selection of Reading in the Brain that was assigned, Dehaene tells of a multitude of strange ways the brain does when reading. The first being the peculiarity of the brains attention to small details but is lacking in larger differences. For example the word eight and sight are nearly identical except for the first letter yet the brain can notice this small different and assign vastly different meanings to said words. However, when One ChaNges the caSe of worDs then the brain filters out said case when interpreting the words meaning and sound. This also happens with words in italics or in bOLd. Another area covered is the automatic breakdown of words into smaller parts in order to classify their meanings otherwise known as morphemes. But one of the largest parts of the selection discusses speech inside the mind. When reading silently words are "spoken" in one's mind and through this we learn and correlate letters, groups of letters that make an understandable sound (bigrams) and finally an audibly correct sounding word. Through other memories and classifications made through learning from others, visual relations, or other means. This learning through sound is the primary learning of children according Dehaene because of the necessary need to slowly comprehend a string of letters and association with a prior known word. 
           Edgeworth however implies something different. Instead of the innate ability to associate morphemes through vision-based teaching, Edgeworth believed that children could not make the connection because they lacked the attention. This fits with her prior thoughts on attention and its very limited amount that can be used at one time. Edgeworth believes that the only way to be able to use and have a large vocabulary is to have many friends and be social. Thus there is a stress on vocalization in order to gain understanding of words. This is also stressed by the understanding of sounds and not the letters themselves. Therefore by learning the sounds found on page 6, one can begin to string together words in order to practice in front of others and learn from everyone. 
             The question at hand however is about learning words and recognizing them. Can one build a large vocabulary through not talking in this day and age of digital, impersonal globalization? If Edgeworth were to look and experience the internet there would be a rather different story. The internet is filled with millions of bits of information of audio, visual and written kinds. We see that as new generations are made, the more connected to technology they become. Because of this, would it be a terrible hindrance to learning if children learn by listening instead of conversing? Would priming still work correctly if words are only spoken through silent thinking? The internet seems like a save-all but will it be the handicap to generations of techno-kids? I believe Dehaene thinks not and it is through this silent talking and priming that words are primarily understood. As long as basic words can be learned in order to create associated morphemes then it seems that a basic understanding of written language can be learned. As for spoken syntax and other vocal peculiarities, these too could be learned without direct communication and could theoretically be taught through mimicry. Imagine, a world where one only learns from a computer screen and cannot live without it... I'm lookin' at you Google and Wikipedia.