Simultaneously, the capacity of literacy for rapid-fire performance released the individual reader not only from the restrictions of memory but from those of time. By its ability to become virtually automatic, literacy allowed the individual reader to give less time to initial decoding processes and to allocate more cognitive time and ultimately more cortical space to the deeper analysis of recorded thought. Developmental differences in the circuit systems between a beginning, decoding brain and a fully automatic, comprehending brain span the length and breadth of the brain’s two hemispheres.
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