Keywords

The word psychology was derived from the Greek word psyche (more specifically the Greek word psuche) meaning the “mind” or “soul” and logos meaning “study” or “discourse.” The word psychology, therefore, literally means the study of the mind. Since the mind is at the heart of human beings, psychology also refers to the study of people. The mind is likely to be shaped by what we do most of the time. We read everyday especially in this digital era in the forms of instant text messages and social media. Text is virtually all-pervasive in our lives. We often read beyond our intention even when we watch television due to the provision of caption or commercials that embed text. Wolf (2007) argues, as shown in the epigraph, how reading is learned changes the brain’s neuronal circuits. Given the connection between the brain and the mind, the major question to understand human beings involves how the brain and the mind are shaped and how they function in conjunction with our habitual reading.

The interconnected networks among reading, language, cognition, and culture are related to Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecosystem, which holistically captures the individual’s development within the interrelated systems of mental, cognitive, physical, moral, and social environments. In human development, language and reading skills are foundational and instrumental to the development of other skills. Within this context, this chapter discusses the consequences of reading. It begins with the software of the mind with respect to the ecosystem of the mind, cognition, language and script, culture, and geographical environments. After discussing the ecosystem of reading, the chapter reviews the cognitive impact of reading in light of the reading brain before discussing linguistic and neurolinguistic evidence of script relativity in Chapters 8 and 9.

1 Ecosystem of Reading

Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological theory is related to the framework of the mind’s software, as it encompasses multiple components that contribute to our learning. The ecological theory explains the individual’s developmental growth with respect to the interconnected networks of biological basis, cognitive characteristics, and the sociocultural dimensions of learning. It views human development as a system of interactions, which comprises four subsystems, comprising the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. The microsystem, the most influential level at the core of the nested system, involves the individual and his/her interactions with immediate and direct agencies, such as caregivers, family members, and peers. All relationships within the ecosystem are bidirectional. The mesosystem refers to the second layer of the nested system involving interconnections and relationships between/among two or more microsystems and between the individual and schools. The exosystem refers to the third layer involving influential but indirect relationships between the individual and other agencies, such as the media, socioeconomic status, poverty, and ethnicity (although these can be categorized as a macrosystem in a different context). The macrosystem concerns the last outermost layer of the system involving the culture of the individual. It also includes cultural and societal beliefs, socioeconomic status, poverty, and ethnicity. All these subsystems commensurate with one another. As the individual’s growth is shaped by the individual’s interactions with the different layers of surroundings, each system exerts both independent and collective impacts on the individual’s growth.

The ecosystem model shows how an individual’s cognitive development occurs in the nested and interconnected structures. Given that not only is reading fundamental for information gathering, processing, and sharing, but also involves multifarious components, such as the script being read, the brain, context, prior knowledge molded by a set of educational systems, culture, and geo-environments, this model fits to reading as well. Drawing upon the ecological system, Figure 7.1 displays the framework of the mind-language/script-culture-geography/environment connectivity as a nested system in relation to reading. At the center is the individual’s mind (microsystem) which is directly influenced by language and script (mesosystem). The subsystem of language and script (or reading) is nested within another layer of culture (exosystem). Since culture is indispensably connected with language and script, culture can reinforce the linguistic and scriptal characteristics in a given culture. The culture is affected by geographical environments (macrosystem). Although the model is stretched toward reading, this is one way to understand the impact of reading.

Fig. 7.1
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The Ecosystem of Reading

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The ecosystem framework comprises both quantitative and qualitative development in the subsystems. The quantitative and qualitative components interact together to facilitate new and more efficient learning (primarily through reading) within the developmental organism. Learning that occurs within the ecosystem is affected by a number of factors. Firstly, individuals have varying levels of aptitude and motivation as well as varying amounts of effort they can put in at a given (reading) situation. These differences are dependent upon individual characteristics and intellectual capacities. Secondly, individuals use selective attention or focus on information depending on relevance and necessity in different learning situations at hand. Lastly, individuals have varying degrees of familial and institutional resources that are influential to their learning. Since the geography and culture have been discussed in Chapter 6, this chapter focuses on the interaction between the script being read and the reading brain as the mesosystem and microsystem, respectively.

1.1 The Reader’s Mind (Microsystem)

The mind is a stream of consciousness and a set of mental capacities encompassing consciousness, perception, judgment, thought, memory, recognition, imagination, volition, and language. It closely works with the brain and nervous systems to understand the outer stimulus, and forms the power of awareness, recognition, and imagination. Coupled with the brain, the mind is the engine that drives our attention, attitudes, and actions. Since mental faculties and behaviors are the functions of the mind, of great interest in cognitive psychology is how the mind works in order to understand our abilities, attitudes, and behaviors. The mind regulates the way we make sense of the world, the way we comprehend and respond to the world, and the way we recognize the significance in our lives. Mental processes such as perception, cognition, and emotion, as well as environmental effects such as sociocultural influences and interpersonal relationships, jointly affect our learning, especially when it comes to reading because reading is a complicate cognitive process (Dehaene, 2009; Wolf, 2007).

In reading, the mind processes information available from the script being read, textual contexts, and prior knowledge formed by culture and physical environments. However, the selectivity of attention (e.g., cocktail party syndrome or effect; the tendency to attend to one thing rather than another while filtering out a range of other stimuli) is primarily involved in reading, coupled with selective perception and understanding. Individuals’ cognitive abilities inherently vary. However, the function of cognitive systems for reading is largely similar across individuals in the mechanism from initial input (e.g., text), its mental processes (e.g., memory, retrieval, and information storage), and output (e.g., comprehension). This also accords with the notion of the universal grammar of reading posed by Perfetti (2003).

1.2 Language and Script: Oracy and Literacy (Mesosystem)

Language is closely related to cognition. Language is essentially involved in every aspect of learning and development. Lenneberg’s (1967) summarizes biological criteria for language in his book, Biological Foundations of Language, as follows:

  • Language is viewed as a species-specific behavior and a human-specific ontogenetic process with universal milestones in language development.

  • Although language processing primarily involves the left hemisphere of the brain, language is integrated into the cerebral structure as a whole.

  • Language structure is a function of basic processes of categorization through generalization, differentiation through the segmentation of categories into subcategories, and transformation through the identification of similarities between categories.

  • The linguistically rich environment is necessary for the actualization of our innate ability of language before puberty.

Although every species has its own communication system, the level of breadth and depth is different. If it is unique to the species, the communication system is part of the genetic makeup of the members of the species (Fernández & Cairns, 2010). The human communication system is the most comprehensive. The sophistication of human language is the defining line between humans and other species. No animal has been able to acquire or learn a creative syntactic system. Some chimpanzees are able to learn more than a hundred individual words, but they fail to organize words in syntactically coherent ways (Fernández & Cairns, 2010). The animal example provides evidence that language is the biologically endowed system only for human beings.

The second criterion involves the universality of language. From the viewpoint of generative linguistics, especially the notion of universal grammar (Chomsky, 1957), the human mind is biologically constructed and programed. According to Chomsky (1957), all humans are hard-wired or biologically predisposed to acquire language using the language acquisition device embedded in our brain. Due to this endowed linguistic faculty, we can produce and understand the infinite number of sentences. Universal grammar posits not only the general organization of the system across languages, but also the universal properties of syntactic rules such that all human beings can utter and understand an infinite number of new sentences. General consensus in applied linguistics and psycholinguistics is established on linguistic universals and linguistic particulars.

The third criterion involves the difference between oral language and written language. The acquisition of the native language is a byproduct of a naturally unfolding process with the condition of proper linguistic exposure, a certain period of time, and interaction between and among social members. Due to its natural aspect, the acquisition of the first language cannot be suppressed when these three conditions are provided. This is another manifestation of the biological nature of language. In contrast, written language does not come naturally and needs to be explicitly learned.

The fourth criterion connects to common language-acquisition milestones and acquisition speed, irrespective of the language being acquired, culture, and learning contexts. The critical period hypothesis posits that there is a golden time window for natural language acquisition (Lenneberg, 1967). A critical period of language acquisition is universally acknowledged as a necessary condition for adequate acquisition before puberty to acquire intuitive syntactic skills in the first language and native-like pronunciation in a foreign language or a second language. After puberty, language acquisition becomes more challenging and effortful, and, although it is possible, learners hardly acquire a full command of language, especially in syntax. Evidence for the critical period hypothesis comes from a report of Genie, a California girl who was deprived of linguistic input from being locked in a closet by an abusive father for the first 13 years of her life (Curtiss, 1977). Without natural exposure to language until her early teen years, Genie was never able to master English despite experts’ explicit linguistic training. She was able to acquire words, but never gained the full mastery of the grammatical system. This is a piece of evidence that strongly demonstrates that language acquisition is an enterprise that relies on both nature (innateness) and nurture (learning).

Although oral speech comes naturally to human beings who have no physiological and psychological impairment, reading is not biological. Building upon Lenneberg’s (1967) biological foundations and psychological capacities of languages, Table 7.1. juxtaposes similarities and differences between oracy and literacy.

Table 7.1 Similarity and Differences between Oracy and Literacy
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According to Ong (1982), reading connects to a new sensory modality by moving speech from the oral-aural form to the form of vision. Ong (1982) asserts that writing not only transforms societies, but also restructures the way we think about and perceive the outer world. However, oracy and literacy are not in a binary opposition. They rather work as a complementary means to each other. Especially as a functional medium for the message transmission, oracy and literacy work in tandem.

McLuhan’s (1964) famous dictum “[t]he medium is the message” underscores a symbiotic relationship between the form of the medium and the effect of the message. It is “the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action” (McLuhan, 1964, p. 9). Beyond being a mere channel for the transmission of message, a medium conveys its own implicit message that affects our perception and the understanding of information delivered, irrespective of its content of the message or the intention of the sender. With the awareness of the crucial role of the medium, McLuhan (1964) classified eight media, including speech, pictographs, ideographs, alphabets, print, radio, film, and television. These media represent the evolution of historical advances over time. Of these eight media, four items are related to writing (and reading)—pictographs, ideographs, alphabets, and print. The recent technological advances of hypermedia and digitally mediated text can be added to the list. Among the different ways of understanding the underpinnings of our society and culture, the medium we essentially rely on to obtain information from print is the script in which we read. The script is basically the medium that not only connects abstract ideas permeated in text to our brain for comprehension, but also allows us to communicate with others in a written form.

Reading is a cognitively demanding activity that involves a multitude of processes, such as the processing of graphemic and phonological information, access to and retrieval from the mental lexicon, working memory, semantics, and prior knowledge. When systematically coded visual marks were invented and developed into a solid writing system about 3,000 years ago, a unique breakthrough into the new world of knowledge took place (Innis, 1972; Ong, 1982; Wolf, 2007). Writing allows the reader to generate the meaning that the writer has intended to express through written signs. Due to writing, we can travel time longitudinally and space horizontally with no constraints and boundaries.

As writing transforms the word from elusive sounds to visual equivalents in a systematic way, Ong (1982) asserts that there is a fundamental difference between oracy (orality in his term) and literacy. In his account of the relationship between the invention of writing and its effect on culture, Ong (1982) stresses writing to be a technology or technological revolution. His view of technology is not a mere exterior aid but an interior agency that transforms our consciousness. He also notes that a technology is artificial, and that, if it is properly interiorized, reading enhances human life. In his view, writing has changed three dimensions drastically: (1) it transforms speech sounds (i.e., oral language) to leave immortal marks in space by assimilating to the form of vision (i.e., written language); (2) it transfers the world of living in the present (i.e., currency) to a long-lasting text (i.e., eternity; longitudinal time travel for which writing allows); and (3) it uses an artificial medium (i.e., arbitrary written signs).

2 The Cognitive Impact of Reading

Given the integral part that written language plays in every sphere of our lives, many scholars have contemplated the impact of reading or literacy on cognitive processes and modes of thought. Based on the significance of the medium and written words’ sustainability, it is natural to surmise the impact of overarching writing systems or specific scripts on thought and culture over time. Ong (1982, 1986) postulated the consequences of literacy, claiming that the transition from oracy to literacy fundamentally changed the form of thought, consciousness, and culture. Ong (1982) asserts that writing was the most momentous among all technological inventions that have ever been made. Ong (1986) also notes that writing has transformed human consciousness more than any other single invention. He considers writing to be a technology that needs to be laboriously learned. Writing has restructured thought patterns by transforming from the world of sound to the world of sight (Logan, 2004; Ong, 1982).

Innis (1972) is also in the same line, claiming “[w]riting enormously enhanced a capacity for abstract thinking” (p. 10). If writing affects human consciousness and cognition, we can conjecture the differences in cognitive thought patterns between the literate and the illiterate as well as among different societies or cultures that have drastically different writing systems. Goody and Watt (1963) posit the relationship between writing systems and their social and cultural diffusion. Specifically, they elucidate how different writing systems yield different cultural (re)production and development. Goody and Watts (1963) acknowledge the difference in cultural traditions between nonliterate and literate societies, and underscore the consequences of literacy in the division of cultural diffusion, power, and hegemony between the literate and the nonliterate. They claim that literacy was used as a tool to maintain social power or status quo in the past by reserving written language to the powerful only (e.g., clergies in the Middle Age).

As a neurobiologically demanding activity, reading is one of the most influential fundamentals in the human genetic and intellectual history (Wolf, 2007). If language shapes the way we think, the script in which we read cannot be overlooked. The effect of reading or literacy on human cognition has long been contemplated. The availability of the printing press and the advent of new technologies have reinforced and solidified the effect of scripts. Increased frequencies of exposure to both traditional text and digitally mediated text are likely to galvanize script effects, and its effects will undoubtedly continue.

When reading, we identify 10 or 12 letters per saccade (Dehaene, 2009). However, the visual span is asymmetrical including three or four letters to the left of fixation and seven or eight letters to the right of fixation, on average. Pollatsek, Bolozky, Well, and Rayner (1981) report asymmetries in the perceptual span that Westerners’ visual span is much greater toward the right side, while readers of Hebrew, who read the page from right to left, show asymmetry to the left. Similarly, Chinese readers, whose characters are much denser than English, show that their saccades are shorter than those of English readers and that their visual span is reduced. This is a piece of evidence that our physiological characteristics can also be changed by the script we read in for a long period of time. These findings demonstrate that readers of each writing system adapt their visual exploration strategy to the script in which they read (Dehaene, 2009).

3 The Reading Brain

Recent scholarship on the relationship between reading and the intricate workings of the brain has grown. Wolf (2007) summarizes the neuronally and intellectually circuitous act as follows:

[A]ll human behaviors are based on multiple cognitive processes, which are based on the rapid integration of information from very specific neurological structures, which rely on billions of neurons capable of trillions of possible connections, which are programmed in large part by genes. In order to learn to work together to perform our most basic human functions, neurons need instructions from genes about how to form efficient circuits or pathways among the neurological structures (p. 10, emphasis in original).

Wolf continues to note that within the biological and cognitive contexts, “the generative capacity of reading parallels the fundamental plasticity in the circuit wiring of our brains” (p. 17). Wolf (2007) underscores the impact of literacy on the brain in that reading is an unnatural process because we do not have an innate disposition for reading. Wolf (2007) asserts “we were never born to read” (p. 3) because there are no genes innately programmed only for reading. This may explain why it took so long for our ancestors to invent writing systems. As Wolf (2007) explains, “[e]ach major type of writing invented by our ancestors demanded something a little different from the brain, and this may explain why more than 2,000 years elapsed between these earliest known writing systems and the remarkable, almost perfect alphabet developed by the ancient Greeks” (p. 18). Interestingly, it parallels the optimal age to learn to read: “… although it took our species roughly 2,000 years to make the cognitive breakthroughs necessary to learn to read with an alphabet, today our children have to reach those same insights about print in roughly 2,000 days” (Wolf, 2007, p. 19).

As a consequence of many years of practice, the brain is rearranged and rewired for reading due to neuroplasticity. Wolf (2007) asserts that the acquisition of literacy has shaped the development of new brain circuitry, as new wiring has evolved from simple counting to the present sophisticated reading brain. According to Wolf (2018), “[t]he act of learning to read added an entirely new circuit to our hominid brain’s repertoire. The long developmental process of learning to read deeply and well changed the very structure of that circuit’s connections, which rewired the brain, which transformed the nature of human thought” (p. 2). She continues to argue, based on a literature review and her own studies, that the brain’s circuitry rearranges itself to accommodate the linguistic demands of each of the writing systems, causing the repertoire of the brain capacities to change in thought.

Dehaene (2009) joins Wolf’s argument of our brain being rewired through the change of the brain’s structures, pathways, circuits, and association. He asserts that “our brain [is] not designed for reading, but recycles some of its circuits for this novel cultural activity” which means reading (p. 8). He dubs the reading activity “neuronal recycling,” meaning that the brain recycles available brain circuits for reading that are already constrained by the genetic architecture because our brain is not inherently designed for reading. To explain his neuronal recycling hypothesis, Dehaene explains how the brain works as follows:

Far from being a blank slate that absorbs everything in its surroundings, our brain adapts to a given culture by minimally turning its predispositions to a different use. It is not a tabula rasa within which cultural constructions are amassed, but a very carefully structured device that manages to convert some of its parts to a new use. When we learn a new skill, we recycle some of our old primate brain circuits—insofar, of course, as those circuits can tolerate the change (p. 7, emphasis in original).

According to the neuronal recycling hypothesis, the brain architecture is tightly constrained, but “some circuits have evolved to tolerate a fringe of variability” (p. 7). Dehaene (2009) also notes that, since a part of the visual system is not constrained or hardwired, it provides room for changes as necessary within the parameter of physiological availability. Moreover, brain plasticity allowed for cultural acquisition, of which our ancestors made use for the invention of written signs. Wolf (2018) joins this line of argument: “it [the brain] is able to go beyond its original, biologically endowed functions—like vision and language—to develop totally unknown capacities such as reading and numeracy” (p. 16) by forming a new set of neuronal networks.

The account of writing systems tells us about the trajectory of linguistic and cognitive development as well as cultural changes over time. It also tells us about how different forms of writing have required different adaptations of the brain’s original structures to accommodate the way we think. The invention of writing systems has facilitated our brains to evolve by assimilating or accommodating information differently according to different writing systems. In antiquity, different types of writing systems appeared and disappeared, as discussed in Chapter 2. Currently used writing systems have been time-tested through natural selection and the function of our brain in terms of assimilation and accommodation. In this sense, the notion of the universal nature of writing systems and its fundamental links to spoken language as well as research findings that support script-specific reading secure its ground to point toward the biological commonality and script-dependent diversity (Perfetti, 2003). Results of neuroimaging studies provide behavioral evidence for these claims.

On a general scale, the literate brain shows a stable cerebral architecture and circuitry specifically attuned to reading in the left occipito-temporal region (Dehaene, 2009; Perfetti, Liu, Nelson, Bolger, & Tan, 2007; Pugh et al., 2000). In addition, Dehaene et al. (2010) have shown that literacy profoundly affects the cortical specialization and organization of the brain, regardless of the time of literacy acquisition (i.e., childhood or adulthood). Brain imaging studies show that written words are processed in different scripts, such as English, Chinese, and Japanese, through similar brain networks in the left occipito-temporal visual word form area, despite differences in the surface form of various written languages (Dehaene, 2009; Kim et al., 2016; Perfetti et al., 2007; see Chapter 9 for more in-depth review). This is consistent with the notion of the universality of reading (Perfetti, 2003).

On a narrower scale, differences in brain specialization have been found according to scripts being read, despite the overlap found toward the left hemisphere at the global level. Chinese characters or Japanese Kanji tend to evoke greater activation and specialization in the left middle temporal region which is related to the mental lexicon, while alphabetic reading is likely to recruit activation in the left superior temporal region and the angular gyrus which are related to the auditory processes through letter-sound conversion route (Chen et al., 2002; Fu et al., 2002; Perfetti et al., 2007). Wolf (2007) also claims that the brains of Chinese, Japanese, and English readers are different in terms of the brain’s network and capacity for visual specialization and organization in the left and right hemispheres (see Figure 3–1, p. 62). Based on neurolinguistic evidence, Wolf (2007) asserts that Chinese readers use a particular set of neuronal connections that are different from the pathways used in reading English. More evidence of neuroimaging is provided in Chapter 9.

Dehaene (2009) argues that “[i]f the brain did not evolve for reading, the opposite must be true: writing systems must have evolved within our brain’s constraints” (p. 8). Based on diversity in spoken languages around the world, this notion may need a further examination. In a sense, this may explain why we have different writing systems across different cultural groups. If the brain was innately designed for reading, we might have had by and large a shared writing system among all cultural groups in the world. Since the brain “recycles” brain circuitry for reading according to written language which encodes spoken language, different brain networks would be observed across speakers of different languages and readers of different scripts. This is directly related to the thesis of this book, script relativity.

Many written signs appeared and disappeared in antiquity. Currently used writing systems have been time-tested and endured, by overcoming inevitable perils encountered over time. Whatever a writing system individuals use within a culture, there should be valid compatibility between the writing system and its users or their culture. Although the invention of writing could be an artificial selection originating thousands of years ago, modifications and reproductions over time might have been governed by natural selection for the best compatibility between writing and its users. Therefore, it is conceivable that the time-tested writing system in each culture has a significant impact on our cognition and perception, which the brain regulates.

In conclusion, the symbolic representation in writing moved our ancestors’ cognitive development to a significant level up from the drawings of simple marked lines or images to a novel concept of the sound-symbol correspondence. Through the use of written symbols to express thoughts and ideas, we can free our cognitive resources and make use of memory and effort in reading more economically to the extent that cognitive processes for reading become automatic. This cognitive efficiency related to reading becomes the backbone of information processing in our lives. This capability closely intertwined with the function of the mind as the microsystem in human development. Among other agents that affect the individual’s cognitive development, both language and the script being read serve as fundamental agents as the microsystem. Many scholars assert that habitual reading shapes the way we think and, further, rewire our brain circuits and networks to the degree that the brain architecture becomes specialized according to the script we read in (Innis, 1972; Ong, 1982; Shlain, 1998; Dehaene, 2009; Wolf, 2007).

This chapter has provided arguments related to the consequences of reading. In the following two chapters, linguistic evidence and neurolinguistics evidence for the consequences of reading are provided based on empirical research, which extends to script relativity.