The Science of Reading and Its Educational Implications

Mark S. Seidenberg
2013 Language Learning and Development  
Research in cognitive science and neuroscience has made enormous progress toward understanding skilled reading, the acquisition of reading skill, the brain bases of reading, the causes of developmental reading impairments and how such impairments can be treated. My question is: if the science is so good, why do so many people read so poorly? I mainly focus on the United States, which fares poorly on cross-national comparisons of literacy, with about 25-30% of the population exhibiting literacy
more » ... kills that are low by standard metrics. I consider three possible contributing factors, all of which turn on issues concerning the relationships between written and spoken language. They are: the fact that English has a deep alphabetic orthography; how reading is taught; and the impact of linguistic variability as manifested in the Black-White "achievement gap". I conclude that there are opportunities to increase literacy levels by making better use of what we have learned about reading and language, but also institutional obstacles and understudied issues for which more evidence is badly needed. Is there an area in cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience that has been more successful than the study of reading? Let's not underestimate the amount that has been learned. We, the community of scientists who study reading (including my colleagues Perfetti and Treiman, whose own research is described in accompanying articles) understand the basic mechanisms that support skilled reading, how reading skill is acquired, and the proximal causes of reading impairments. We understand the fundamental problem facing the beginning reader: how to relate a new code, a written script, to an existing code, spoken language. We know which behaviors of 4 year old pre-readers are strong predictors of later reading ability, how children make the transition from pre-reader to reader, and the obstacles that many encounter. We know what distinguishes good and poor readers, younger and older skilled readers, "typical" readers from those who are atypical because of either constitutional factors (such as a hearing or learning impairment) or environmental ones (for example, poor schooling or poverty). We know how basic skills that provide the child's entry into reading relate to other types of knowledge and capacities that support comprehending texts of increasing variety and difficulty. We understand that some aspects of reading are universal (because people's brains are essentially alike) and that some are not (because of differences among writing systems and the languages they represent).
doi:10.1080/15475441.2013.812017 pmid:24839408 pmcid:PMC4020782 fatcat:n6iq3cixxjc5bpxe73rbourlxy