Credit: Guardian
Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older boys don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on Kindles or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknownst to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing – a change with implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.
As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic information, like the number of goats in one’s herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in […]
So rirst I skimmed through the article comparing the general concept to my own experience. Then I went back and looked deeper at what I found interesting. Then I looked for recognition of possible causality factors (social class, health, medication, drugs,economic time pressures, language/dialect, etc, particularly refrencing that kids don’t deeply delve into 18-19th century literature.), reflected on the nearly lost capacity for deep listening and wondered when that occurred…then realized the article was trying to look strictly at digital vs physical book? reading, looked for source links to research, found none so said to myself…I don’t have time to research this. Hmmm…
My wife, Barbara, and I discuss a lot the differences between what she was taught in her home state of New Jersey and mine in Pennsylvania. She had to read many books from the 18th to 19th century in her classes, yet I never had those books discussed in any of my studies. I feel that she got a better education in her home state than I did. So I must conclude the issue is not just books vs. digital language but something much bigger and more comprehensive at stake. Where you live is a big decision factor that is overlooked in this study, I am afraid.
Post Script: I have always loved real books and just cannot stand reading anything on the computer, with the exception of this site and a few other progressive sites for the news content mainly. As far as books go I have spent a small fortune becoming an autodidact in many areas including metaphysics, physics, psychology, astrophysics, astronomy, archeology, religion, electricity, surveying, climate-change, and a long list of other subjects. Since I broke my back in the electrical field lifting a 500 pound cable roll, I have had a lot of time to discover a lot of information leading me on a path to self discovery, and I like nothing better than holding a good book in my hands, especially a hardback with large print, since my eyes are starting to go at my old age (I’m well over 70). I like Stephan’s books a lot, and would recommend them to all because among the hundreds of books I have, his are some of my favorites. I will never give up learning because I believe that is why we are here on Earth. I wish Trump and the rest of those in government would read more. This USA would be much better off if they would all read more so they would know what the outcome of their decisions will effect in the present and (maybe even more important) in the future.
Yeah, I can confess to skimming. I saw this article in The Guardian earlier and here. Many times, the gist of the piece is contained within the title and subtitle. We were taught well back in high school English, that one might assume the thrust of an article, by perusing the first and last paragraphs.
Since so many of us live alone and use the Net as a companion, one that doesn’t talk back, hahaha we are ‘guilty’ of this skimming practice. For those who read voraciously as does this scribbler, it’s not so bad. Every now and then though, a piece flies directly in front of our radar, that absolutely commands full attention.
How is it that non-reading animals (i.e. elephants etc.) display empathy; & how can we learn from that?