Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World

by Maryanne Wolf

The unnatural, cultural origin of literacy—the first deceptively simple fact about reading—means that young readers do not have a genetically based program for developing such circuits. Reading-brain circuits are shaped and developed by both natural and environmental factors, including the medium in which reading is acquired and developed. Each reading medium advantages certain cognitive processes over others. Translation: the young reader can either develop all the multiple deep-reading9 processes that are currently embodied in the fully elaborated, expert reading brain; or the novice reading brain can become “short-circuited” in its development; or it can acquire whole new networks in different circuits. There will be profound differences in how we read and how we think, depending on which processes dominate the formation of the young child’s reading circuit.