Ep 57: Brain scans and reading comprehension

Welcome back for the start of a new year! I hope you had just the kind of festive season you wanted and 2025 is off to a good start.I’m thinking of making some changes to the pod this year, which I touch on in this episode. Would love to have your feedback to know whether you’d see them as an improvement (or the opposite).In this episode I cover a paper about the N400, which is a brainwave they can measure with EEG technology, and what it can tell us about reading comprehension on paper and on screens. Warning, it’s a bit weedsy, but it all comes out pretty straightforward at the end (and since recording the piece I’ve confirmed with somebody who knows about these things that my interpretation was quite well-based - so that’s good!)The review is of a Disney classic, Bedknobs and Broomsticks - which has lots to entertain older children but might need a bit of explanation as to the historical context - both of World War II and of early 70s Hollywood.Then the episode is rounded off with some reflections on a particular detail of the Australian social media minimum age legislation. The Government has said it’s planning to exempt messaging services, and I’m not so sure that makes sense …In the course of discussing it I refer to a Substack post about group texting - see link below. If you go to her page you’ll see quite a lot of posts about the author’s politics and voting intentions; I hope it goes without saying that I’m not endorsing these. (As an aside, though, I found it interesting to imagine an Australian author posting equivalent material … couldn’t quite see it.)Thanks for listening, and if you want to support the podcast, you know what to doShow notesUS paper: Karen Froud, Lisa Levinson, Chaille Maddox and Paul Smith, ‘Middle-schoolers’ reading and lexical-semantic processing depth in response to digital and print media: An N400 study’ (2024) 19(5) PLoS ONE e0290807 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0290807Bedknobs and Broomsticks review: https://childrenandmedia.org.au/movie-reviews/movies/bedknobs-and-broomsticksBedknobs and Broomsticks availability in Australia: https://www.flicks.com.au/movie/bedknobs-and-broomsticks/Zooming Out details: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22legislation%2Fbillhome%2Fr7284%22 (and check out in particular the Explanatory Memorandum); blog post about group texting by Cindy Million Find us on:FacebookInstagramLinkedInSubstackApple PodcastsSpotifyOR search your favourite listening platform (let me know if it’s not there! – outsidethescreenpod[at]gmail.com)Children and Media Australia (CMA)You can find the Children and Media Australia Know Before You Go service via this link.Then, depending what you’re looking for, you can sort the list or search by title alphabetically, by age suitability, by classification or by date added. All of the reviews are prepared by people with training in child development, and they cover every G and PG title released in Australian cinemas since 2002, as well as selected M-rated movies and some pre-2002 ones that are available on streaming services.Or at this link, you can access Know Before You Load – reviews of game style apps and apps that may appeal to young children. These cover some extra things that are relevant to games, like data collection and gambling-like content.You might also like to sign up for our KBYG Weekly newsletter about the latest reviews, and join the CMA facebook community. Get full access to Outside the Screen Podcast at outsidethescreen.substack.com/subscribe