Learning to Read and Why Reading Isn’t Natural
How Reading Changes the Brain
Reading may feel effortless to the fluent reader, like second nature. However, the human brain is not born knowing how to do it. In the book Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain (2007), cognitive neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf argues that reading is “one of the most remarkable inventions in history” (Wolf, 2007) precisely because the brain has to teach itself something it was never genetically designed to do.
Unlike speech, with its deep evolutionary roots, written language has existed for only about 5,000 years; not enough time for the brain to evolve dedicated neural circuitry for reading and writing (Miller, 2010). From birth, the human baby starts to distinguish sounds through a highly messy spaghetti of synaptic connections, which, then, are pruned and shaped by our language and culture, but that is for another post that examines the research by Lera Borodiski on how language shapes thought.
The Brain Reads by Repurposing Itself
Wolf describes this adaptive process as the brain’s capacity for neuroplasticity, an ability to forge new connections by repurposing regions originally built for other tasks, such as object recognition, spoken language, and motor planning (also explored by Norman Dodge in his book, The Brain that Changes Itself).
As a child learns to read, the visual cortex begins to recognise letters as shapes, passing signals to the temporal cortex, which assigns meaning to words. Regions including the temporo-parietal cortex and the inferior frontal gyrus handle phonological decoding, essentially helping the reader “hear” the sounds behind the letters. Wolf calls this network of repurposed circuits the reading circuit, and crucially, she emphasises that it is never the same in any two brains.
What Neuroimaging Reveals
Functional MRI studies confirm Wolf’s belief (Turkeltaub et al., 2003), as reading skills develop from childhood into adolescence, there is increased brain activity. Regular readers also develop greater grey matter volume in language-related areas and stronger white matter connections linking language and memory networks. Researcher Stanislas Dehaene, whose work Wolf frequently references, found that literate individuals exhibit significantly stronger cortical responses to written words than non-readers. Evidence that literacy permanently reorganises brain function.
The Gift of the “Reading Brain”
Perhaps Wolf’s most powerful insight is what she calls the “reading brain’s” greatest gift: the ability to go beyond the information on the page. Deep reading, reading that is nurtured through sustained engagement with literature, activates inferential reasoning, empathy, and critical analysis. These are the critical thinking skills that Socrates was so worried man would lose once he succumbed to writing and reading. Therefore, it is not surprising that Wolf warns that if children are raised in environments where shallow, screen-based reading replaces deep reading, these higher cognitive circuits may never fully develop.
For educators, Wolf’s research is a compelling reminder that teaching a child to read is not simply a literacy task; it develops critical thinking and reshapes the human brain with consequences that last a lifetime.
Dyslexia and the misconceptions
Dyslexia is often misconstrued. It conjures the perception of a disability, slow learning, inability to read or spell well, word and letter reversals, and just about anything related to learning.
It has also been hijacked by celebrities and geniuses whose claims can be soul-destroying for individuals and parents whose daily struggles are so far removed from the fairy tales of success.
Dyslexia affects learning in many ways, likely because it interferes with conventional learning methods. What is more frustrating is that it never goes away; it never stops smacking you in the face and making you feel inadequate; it never stops zapping your confidence and energy. And, yet, Ronald D Davis writes that “the mental function that causes dyslexia is a fit in the truest sense of the word: a natural ability, a talent. It is something special that enhances the individual” (The Gift of Dyslexia, 1994).
If only the education system could recognise this, above the celebrity noise. However, education is a system, a process that has to adhere to norms and regulations and anything or anyone that cannot exist in that bubble will struggle. Think of it like the two colonies of ants in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, where an ant from one colony tries to join another. While we do not physically annihilate the alien ant, we do not welcome it.
Dyslexics have a perceptual talent that has become so ingrained in their make-up that it becomes part and parcel of the way they look at everything. To them, everything is a picture, and if you cannot associate a letter or a word with a perceptual image, the brain has a hard time processing it.
I could go on about dyslexia, but I would not be able to do it justice. Each person with dyslexia is unique, and dyslexia is not a form of neurological damage to brain function or an excuse. In the early part of the last century, Dr Samuel T Orton postulated a few theories, but as anyone with a dyslexic kid knows, there is little use in knowing where it came from unless you can find strategies to correct it or use it innovatively to push learning to a high level.
A student with special needs, on top of everything else in the classroom, becomes a chore. Many students with dyslexia have high IQs; however, this is offset by a perceived average processing speed. I suppose this must be like having the mind of a greyhound and the legs of a dachshund. Difficult to fathom why your child’s processing is only average when their thoughts are always miles ahead of everyone. Read them a story, and they have worked out an ending before you are halfway through; hand them a model, and they have built it in their head before opening the instructions.
Robert Davis explores this phenomenon in his book, The Gift of Dyslexia. For example, reading the word CAT a child with dyslexia does not just see a three-letter word, he/she sees it as a string of symbols that dance around the page and probably display themselves in 40 different combinations, a swimming sea of letters in front of them, letters that refuse to just sit still for a moment, refuse to let you process the symbols and find an associated image.
To put this plainly, with the case of a new word, the dyslexic may put 40 pieces of information into his/her brain, which then goes through an elimination process to find the correct corresponding sound, word and meaning. This process often seems like guesswork, and on many occasions, I have groaned at my son for guessing a word rather than sounding it out phonetically. The absence or impairment of phonological processing then raises the question of whether we should be force-feeding phonics to dyslexic children.
Perhaps their method of learning and processing requires a complete rethink, a different approach?