Jorge's blog

Trauma alters brain circuits to strengthen conditioned fear.   (📷:empowervmedia) C lassical conditioning is a type of learning where a neutral stimulus becomes linked to an important event. For example, imagine Pavlov ’s famous dogs: they learned to salivate (response) to a bell (neutral cue) because the bell was repeatedly paired with food . In similar fashion, our minds can learn fear. Classical conditioning means we automatically associate a neutral cue with something scary, so that the cue alone later sparks that same fear response . 'Pavlov's Dogs' ▶️3m02s In a trauma scenario, the traumatic event (like a car crash, assault, or explosion) acts as a powerful unconditioned stimulus that naturally provokes terror. Neutral details from that moment (a sound, an odour, a place) get stamped in as conditioned stimuli. Later, those once-ordinary cues can trigger panic or distress even when no danger is present. For instance, a war veteran might suddenly feel terror upon ...

Oracy and literacy are deeply intertwined.   (📷:empowervmedia) T he term oracy ( coined by Andrew Wilkinson in 1965 ) refers to our ability to communicate through spoken language (essentially, speaking and listening skills). It is sometimes called “the literacy of the spoken word” . In contrast, literacy refers to reading and writing (the skills of decoding letters and encoding ideas in text). Importantly, children acquire oracy naturally long before literacy: we learn to talk, sing and understand speech well before we learn to read or write. In practice, this means that the vocabulary, sentence structures, and thinking skills we develop through talking provide the scaffolding for understanding written text and expressing ourselves in writing. In fact, research shows that oral language ability tends to place an upper limit on reading comprehension (if you cannot recognise a word by listening, you cannot fully understand it when reading) . In short, oracy and literacy are like tw...