Learning Principles Underlying Audiblox

To fully understand what Audiblox is, it is necessary to know (1.) its point of departure and (2.) the learning principles on which it is based.

Its point of departure is that there is nothing that any human being knows, or can do, that he has not learned. This of course excludes natural body functions, such as breathing, as well as the reflexes, for example the involuntary closing of the eye when an object approaches it. But apart from that a human being knows nothing, or cannot do anything, that he has not learned. This implies that there is not necessarily anything wrong with a person who cannot do something. He does not necessarily suffer from a learning disability. He may simply not have learned it yet — and any person can learn almost anything, provided that he is taught according to viable learning principles.

There are three viable — and universal — learning principles on which Audiblox is based:

The first learning principle is that human learning does not take place on a single level, but is a stratified process. This characteristic is worldwide accepted as a didactic principle. The way in which the school system throughout the whole world is organized is an acknowledgement of this. One cannot send a child to university first. He must start in the first class and then progress year after year to the higher levels of education. Unless he has mastered a sufficient amount of the knowledge to form a firm enough base on which to build the knowledge of the following year, he will not make progress in the next class.

Another simple and practical example is the fact that one has to learn to count before it becomes possible to learn to add and subtract. Suppose one tried to teach a child, who had not yet learned to count, to add and subtract. This would be quite impossible, and no amount of effort would ever succeed in teaching the child to add and subtract. This shows that counting is a skill that must be mastered before it becomes possible to learn to do calculations.

This means that there is a sequence that is to be observed in teaching. Certain things have to be taught first, before it becomes possible to teach other things.

The main objective of the Audiblox program is to practice and automatize the skills that underlie reading, spelling, writing, mathematics and the learning of subject matter. A schematic diagram of the act of reading is presented below, as well as a detailed explanation of the diagram:

The reading process can be divided into three steps: Reception, decoding and learning.

Reception:

There are many factors involved in the reception of the written word. The first is that a person must be able to focus his attention on the written word and to keep his attention on it for some length of time. This is called concentration.

Concentration rests on two legs. First, it is an act of will and cannot take place automatically. The will to focus attention on the written word must be sustained in order to carry out all the actions needed to fully comprehend it. Second, it is also a skill, and therefore has to be taught.

The next step in receiving the written word is that it must be perceived. In other words, perception must take place.

Before one can learn anything, one has to become aware of it through one of the senses. Usually one has to hear or see it. Subsequently one has to interpret whatever one has seen or heard. In essence then, perception means interpretation. Of course, lack of experience may cause a person to be liable to misinterpretation of what he has seen or heard.

Perception in itself consists of a large number of subskills, that can all be automatized. There are various ways of perceptualizing, namely visual, auditory and haptic. The latter includes touch perception and kinesthetic perception. Because we read with our eyes, visual perception plays the most important role in the reading act.

When a person is reading, visual discrimination must take place. All printed letters are set against a certain background. The most important difference between the letters and the background is that they differ in color. Obviously, the first discrimination will thus be in terms of color. The second discrimination is in terms of foreground-background. The particular letter, or word, or sentence, that the reader is focused on is elevated to the level of foreground, whereas everything else within the field of vision of the reader (the rest of the page and the book, the desk on which the book is resting, the section of the floor and/or wall that is visible, etc.) is relegated to the background. Our Latin alphabet consists of 26 letters, each with its corresponding capital letters with a difference in size and sometimes in shape compared to the lower case counterpart. The letters all differ in form or shape and must be discriminated accordingly. Capital letters sometimes look exactly the same as their lower case counterparts, and must therefore be discriminated mainly with regard to size. One also does not only read letters, but thoughts, all compiled from a conglomeration of words. A word is made up of a number of letters arranged in a particular sequence. The reader must therefore be able to discriminate the letters in terms of their positions. If a sketch or picture is included in the text, there must be discrimination of dimensionality as well.

After having discriminated every letter in terms of color, foreground and background, form, size and position, letters must be combined into words. The reader must be able to perceive individual parts as a whole. In other words, he must be able to synthesize.

Although the ability to analyze, i.e. to perceive the whole in its individual parts, does play a role in reading, this ability is of special importance in spelling. To be a good speller, one must be able to analyze.

The above events sound very complex, and indeed must be recognized as being just that. In reality they take place all the time — at lightning speed — while a person is reading, but a good reader is unaware of these events because they have been automatized. It can be compared to a Spaniard speaking Spanish while doing other things because his knowledge of the language has been automatized through regular practice and usage. While speaking, he is not concentrating on grammar, word order, sentence structure, and things like that, but on the contents of what he wants to say. This is only possible because his language has become automatized.

Decoding:

When a person attempts to speak a language that has not become automatic yet, he will necessarily have to divide his attention between the content of his message and the language itself. He will therefore speak haltingly and with great difficulty — just as a person, in whom the above-mentioned foundational skills of reading have not yet become automatized, also reads haltingly and with great difficulty. The poor reader is forced to apply all his concentration to the reception of the written word, and therefore has "no concentration left" to decode it. Every little piece of butter can only be spread on a certain size of bread.

Decoding is a very important aspect of the reading act. Without being able to decode the written word, the reader cannot understand it. This explains why some children can "read" without understanding what they are reading.

Decoding implies that the reader is able to decipher the written word, in other words, he is able to ascribe meaning to it. This becomes possible first by integrating what he is reading with his foreknowledge. Foreknowledge can be defined as the range of one's existing knowledge and past experiences.

A decoding skill that is closely related to that of integration, is classification. When a person sees a chair, although he may never have seen a chair exactly like this one, he will nevertheless immediately recognize it as a chair, because he is familiar with the class of objects we call "chair." This implies that, whenever a name is ascribed to an object, it is thereby put into a specific class of objects, or it is classified.

The Gestalt principle of closure means that the mind is able to derive meaning from objects or pictures that are not perceived in full. I -m s-re th-t y-- w-ll b- -ble to und-rsta-d th-s s-ntenc- (I am sure that you will be able to understand this sentence), although more than 25 percent of the letters have been omitted. The mind is quite able to bridge the gaps that were left in the sentence. The idea of closure is, however, more than just seeing parts of a word and amplifying them. It also entails the amplification of the author's message. No author can put all his thoughts into words. This stresses the importance of foreknowledge. If it were possible for an author to put everything related to the subject he is dealing with on paper, foreknowledge would have been unnecessary. That, however, is impossible, as an author can at most present us with a very limited cross-section of reality and the reader must be able to expand this before comprehension becomes possible.

Lastly, imagination plays a role in decoding. While one is reading, one is also picturing the objects and ideas symbolized by the words. Should the author describe a beautiful landscape, one would actually picture this in the mind's eye. One does not merely see the pictures called to mind by the respective words, one also sees the scene. This plays a very important role in decoding the written word. Furthermore, by using one's imagination while reading, one's emotions can be addressed during the reading act.

Learning:

Only after a person has decoded the written word can learning take place. To learn, a person must be able to store something that he has perceived and decoded, so that he will be able to recall this information at a later stage. The ability to recall to memory or to remember, makes learning possible.

Memory is one of the foundational skills of learning which is of special importance in the so-called learning subjects at school or university, where information is presented to the learner, and it is expected that he be able to reproduce it as accurately as possible. However, memory is a skill that is also of great importance to the reading act. For example, recognizing the shapes of the different letters comprising a particular word, is an act of memory. Every word also consists of letters in a particular sequence, and one has to remember what word is represented by the sequence of letters in question.

Audiblox practices and automatizes the above-mentioned foundational skills.

The importance of repetition in the learning situation cannot be denied. There is not a single person on this earth who learned to speak a language, learned to swim, skate, play golf, or drive a car, without repetition. In the same way, neither the skills foundational to reading, nor reading itself, can be learned without repetition.

In recent years, neuroscientists have discovered that repetition is important in the "wiring" of a person's brain, i.e. the forming of connections or synapses between the brain cells. Without these connections, the brain cells are as useless as batteries standing in a row next to a torch. Only when the batteries and torch are connected, can they make a shining light.

Mere repetition, however, is not the end of the story. A "pyramid of repetition" has to be constructed. This means that a learner must start by repeating a limited amount of material many times over and over. Gradually, less and less repetition will be necessary to master new skills and new knowledge. Without building this "pyramid of repetition" first, later learning will always be time consuming and prone to failure.

Audiblox practices and automatizes the foundational skills of reading, spelling, writing and mathematics by systematically creating a "pyramid of repetition."

The third principle is that there must be opportunities for application. While a person is learning to master the skills that form the basis of reading, spelling, writing or mathematics, he should already be given opportunities to apply these skills.

An important point is that these three principles should be looked upon as a whole and should not be viewed in isolation.