Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain
by Maryanne Wolf
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A developmental psychologist evaluates the ways in which reading and writing have transformed the human brain, in an anecdotal study that reveals the significant changes in evolutionary brain physiology throughout history.Tags
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Loved this book on the "science of reading." Wolf, a professor at Tufts, delves into how reading shapes our brains and our thinking by looking at the evolution of reading and how it changed both our ability to order society and think independently, and how it actually shaped our brain development. She then tackles the neuroscience behind reading, which was fascinating--especially for those of us who work with children doing the difficult work of learning to read. Her book gives insight into how remarkable this ability actually is. Wolf closes by speculating on what changes will come in this century as we morph from print readers to digital consumers of information, with some cautionary ideas that were worth considering. Informing the show more entire book, was her revelation that her son is dyslexic, and her findings about how this reading "disability" actually shows the plasticity and adaptive qualities of our brains--and marks those with dyslexia as actually having some important traits that we need to nurture and value. Lots to consider here, especially for those of us working with children and literacy. show less
This book explores what the unnatural act of learning to read does to our brains, how that has affected human culture, and what is going on in the brains of people who have trouble putting together all the complicated cerebral processes of reading. Wolf's writing is accessible and her experience as a professor and a dyslexia researcher make her more than qualified to tell this story. The overview of the history of writing and reading over time and across cultures and the personal explorations of what reading means to an individual really hit home with me. I lost interest a bit in the (rather lengthy) sections on the brain and the physiological aspects of reading. The very end of the book raised the question of how reading on the show more internet and our phones may once again change our brains or shape the way we think, but Wolf pulls back from the implications of this idea and lands on something like "kids these days don't have a good attention span because of phones." I think that's a little too simple, and I wish the book had spent some of its anatomical real estate on current research into the impact of the Internet on the reading brain. show less
This is a fascinating look at how humans developed reading and writing and what reading does to the brain. It is divided into 3 sections: the first a history of the development of reading, the second a look at how children learn to read and how it changes the brain, and the third looking at learning anomalies such as dyslexia and what they further tell us about the brain.
I really liked this. The language can be a bit dense and scientific, especially in the latter sections, but it was very interesting. One of my big takeaways was the idea that reading is not an inherited skill but something that each human attempts to learn from scratch. I also was very interested to read about the way the skill of reading changes neural pathways and show more the implications for how these pathways can lead to a deeper way of thinking in many ways.
Wolf briefly addresses her concerns about how an increasing digital age may again change our neural pathways, much as happened when the Greeks discussed the move to written word away from "dialogues" and memorization for oral retelling. This was a big concern for Socrates, at the cusp of this mental shift. show less
I really liked this. The language can be a bit dense and scientific, especially in the latter sections, but it was very interesting. One of my big takeaways was the idea that reading is not an inherited skill but something that each human attempts to learn from scratch. I also was very interested to read about the way the skill of reading changes neural pathways and show more the implications for how these pathways can lead to a deeper way of thinking in many ways.
Wolf briefly addresses her concerns about how an increasing digital age may again change our neural pathways, much as happened when the Greeks discussed the move to written word away from "dialogues" and memorization for oral retelling. This was a big concern for Socrates, at the cusp of this mental shift. show less
Our brains are not designed for reading. So it may seem remarkable that over thousands of years we gradually developed symbols and the rules for manipulating them that constitute a written language. Despite the fact that reading is not a natural ability, we obviously must gain a huge advantage through being able to communicate through written text. And it turns out that our brains adapt to this situation, deploying multiple abilities that work in concert and improve their efficiency dramatically over time in order to fully exploit our environment of written language. It is a story, both evolutionary and socio-cultural, that borders on the unbelievable. Yet it doesn’t come to the fore until we encounter and have to deal with show more individuals whose brains have not developed along the lines that lead to reading efficiency. For the dyslexic, reading can be a gargantuan challenge.
Maryanne Wolf presents this story of reading from the perspective of a neuroscientist, but rooted both professionally and personally in working directly with people burdened with dyslexia. Of course that burden itself is culturally enforced. Since no brain is designed, as it were, for reading, it can hardly have been an evolutionary disadvantage (at least throughout most of history) to not develop this remarkable skill. And indeed the evidence suggests that many of those suffering from the stigma of dyslexia have brains that are better designed, in terms of their wiring, for artistic or conceptual work. And so the effort to understand precisely what is going on in the reading brain is both an effort to ease the path for those who do not quickly attain fluency and to acknowledge that there are a wealth of equally valuable other paths that a “successful” brain might take.
This was a fascinating account told with humility and grace. It contains enough of the neuroscience to fully inform even the most ardent scientific reader, but enough of the humane aspects of what reading is and means to keep the reader focussed on what really matters. Recommended. show less
Maryanne Wolf presents this story of reading from the perspective of a neuroscientist, but rooted both professionally and personally in working directly with people burdened with dyslexia. Of course that burden itself is culturally enforced. Since no brain is designed, as it were, for reading, it can hardly have been an evolutionary disadvantage (at least throughout most of history) to not develop this remarkable skill. And indeed the evidence suggests that many of those suffering from the stigma of dyslexia have brains that are better designed, in terms of their wiring, for artistic or conceptual work. And so the effort to understand precisely what is going on in the reading brain is both an effort to ease the path for those who do not quickly attain fluency and to acknowledge that there are a wealth of equally valuable other paths that a “successful” brain might take.
This was a fascinating account told with humility and grace. It contains enough of the neuroscience to fully inform even the most ardent scientific reader, but enough of the humane aspects of what reading is and means to keep the reader focussed on what really matters. Recommended. show less
As you might have noticed if you follow my reviews, I read a fair bit. It was therefore fascinating to get an insight into what my brain does as it devours books. ‘Proust and the Squid’ provides an impressively clear explanation of neuroscientific research on this front, as well as a brief history of reading. Wolf discusses recent findings enthusiastically, while showing how much is still unknown and/or disputed. I was delighted to learn how human beings learn to read, a skill that repurposes parts of our brains that certainly didn’t evolve for this. Wolf also explains the various ways in which that learning can be impeded, which vary according to language. I’d never thought of this before, but of course different types of show more languages require slightly different neural paths:
Reading becomes an automatic skill as the brain forms shortcuts to perform the various tasks involved more quickly. Perhaps my favourite part of the book was a detailed breakdown of each step and where in the brain is activated at each point, a subsection titled ‘Every word has 500 milliseconds of fame’. Also notable are the theories of dyslexia, a problem that of course did not exist until reading became widespread. Just as the brain pathways required to read vary by language, so does the nature of dyslexia:
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of reading’s early history, including hieroglyphics and the invention of the Greek alphabet, with current research. This emphasises the complexity and variability of reading across time and geography in a relatively short book. Although the style is accessible and breaks down complex concepts for the non-scientist, you can tell Wolf is an academic because the whole thing is so well-structured. (I often notice the difference in structural rigour between non-fiction by academics and journalists.) The concluding chapter raises questions and concerns about the transition to more digital reading, which I gather are considered in Wolf’s more recent book [b:Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World|35887237|Reader, Come Home The Reading Brain in a Digital World|Maryanne Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1529488453l/35887237._SY75_.jpg|57403747]. I’m curious to read that too, of course. ‘Proust and the Squid’ was first published in 2008, so it’ll be interesting to see how research has advanced since.
Finally, I think this book would be of particular interest to parents, as it explains in detail the stages a child goes through when learning to read. This provides useful guidance on how to support their learning, which also helpfully informs my choice of books to buy for friends babies as they get older. Rhyming poetry looks like a particularly good option. show less
Japanese readers offer a particularly interesting example because each reader’s brain must learn two very different writing systems: one of these is a very efficient syllabary (kana) used especially for foreign words, names of cities, names of persons, and newer words in Japanese; and the second is an older Chinese-influenced logographic script (kanji). When reading kanji, Japanese readers use pathways similar to those of the Chinese; when reading kana, they use pathways much more similar to alphabet readers. In other words, not only are different pathways utilised by readers of Chinese and English, but different routes can be used within the same brain for reading different types of scripts. And because of the brain’s prodigious ability to adapt its design, the reader can become efficient in each language.
Reading becomes an automatic skill as the brain forms shortcuts to perform the various tasks involved more quickly. Perhaps my favourite part of the book was a detailed breakdown of each step and where in the brain is activated at each point, a subsection titled ‘Every word has 500 milliseconds of fame’. Also notable are the theories of dyslexia, a problem that of course did not exist until reading became widespread. Just as the brain pathways required to read vary by language, so does the nature of dyslexia:
Depending on what is emphasised in any given language (fluency in German; visual spatial memory in Chinese; phonological skills in English), there will somewhat different faces of dyslexia, as well as different predictors of reading failure. […] Among Spanish speakers, researchers in Madrid found sub-types similar to our double deficit [naming speed and phoneme awareness] classification, with one striking difference: comprehension among the most affected subtype appeared far less impaired in Spanish readers with dyslexia than in English readers with dyslexia. Similar data emerged for Hebrew. […] It appears that the shorter time needed for decoding in these languages allows more time for comprehension than in English.
[…]
When phonological skills play a more significant role in reading acquisition, as they do in less regular languages like English and French, phoneme awareness and decoding accuracy are often very deficient – and are good predictors of dyslexia. When these skills play a less dominant role in reading (in the transparent orthographies like German, and the more logographic writing systems), processing speed becomes the stronger diagnostic predictor of reading performance, and reading fluency and comprehension issues dominate the profile of dyslexia. In these more transparent languages – Spanish, German, Finnish, Dutch, Greek, and Italian – the child with dyslexia exhibits fewer problems decoding words and more problems reading connected text fluently with good comprehension.
I enjoyed the juxtaposition of reading’s early history, including hieroglyphics and the invention of the Greek alphabet, with current research. This emphasises the complexity and variability of reading across time and geography in a relatively short book. Although the style is accessible and breaks down complex concepts for the non-scientist, you can tell Wolf is an academic because the whole thing is so well-structured. (I often notice the difference in structural rigour between non-fiction by academics and journalists.) The concluding chapter raises questions and concerns about the transition to more digital reading, which I gather are considered in Wolf’s more recent book [b:Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World|35887237|Reader, Come Home The Reading Brain in a Digital World|Maryanne Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1529488453l/35887237._SY75_.jpg|57403747]. I’m curious to read that too, of course. ‘Proust and the Squid’ was first published in 2008, so it’ll be interesting to see how research has advanced since.
Finally, I think this book would be of particular interest to parents, as it explains in detail the stages a child goes through when learning to read. This provides useful guidance on how to support their learning, which also helpfully informs my choice of books to buy for friends babies as they get older. Rhyming poetry looks like a particularly good option. show less
Wolf does an excellent job at making a very scholarly, technical treatise (graphemes, morphemes, ideograms, etc.) engaging and enlightening. Overall, this is a deep dive into the details of reading as a neurobiological feat explored to its expression unique often culturally (such as Chinese versus English) and in its breakdown, such as in dyslexia. The survey of the science is very good and educational, but I cannot agree with a sort of moral about the triumph of digital media over books. The author points out that Socrates feared the rise of books as some sort of support for digital communication dumbing down humans without confronting an apparent hypocrisy: Might our fear of a digital rise be as short-sighted as Socrates' fear of the show more rise of writing? show less
Brains are amazing.
One of the most fascinating aspects of modern neuroscience (for a pop-science consumer like me) is that we are increasingly learning that things which seem very simple can actually involve multiple parts of the brain working in co-ordination. Apparently Capgrass syndrome, in which people believe that a close family member has been replaced with an identical imposter, comes about because the bit of brain which recognises that person is working, but the bit which provides the emotional connection has gone awry. Equally, it's only around the age of six that children can understand a phrase like 'left of the blue wall', and if you knock out an adult's language-processing ability by making them repeat nonsense phrases show more while they do the exercise, they can't locate something that's 'left of the blue wall' either.
The relevance of all this is that Proust And The Squid is about what actually happens in our brains while we read, and it turns out to be tremendously complex. For readers of English, three different parts of our brains are involved in simply processing the words in front of our eyes (for more regularly-spelled languages like Spanish, it's two and for logosyllabic languages like Chinese or, apparently, ancient Sumerian, it's four).
Even more incredible is what happens immediately after that. If we read a random collection of letters, say 'mbli', the brain processes the letters then goes quiet; if it's a real word - like 'limb' - all sorts of connections start to fire. "The difference between the two arrangements of the same letters ... was almost half a cortex." In fact, at one point in this fascinating book, Wolf describes the brain processes which take place in the first half a second after a word is read. It takes eight pages.
And as fluent readers, we do this so quickly that we also have the mental space to think about what we are reading means - not just word + word + word + word. One of Wolf's points, in fact, is the way that reading helps the mind to open doors, to fire off other connections and thoughts. It's entirely appropriate, therefore, that this book made my mind spark trains of thought like fireworks.
One note: Wolf is not a popular science writer but an expert in the subject who is trying to write accessibly. She does so very effectively, partly because she can make the subject so fascinating. (I found the third part of the book, which deals with dyslexia, the most 'sciencey', probably because I was less interested in it than the first two - about the history of written language and then about the brain processes).
She also draws interesting conclusions from the science about childhood education, for example the long-term impact of 'word poverty' (by the age of five, some children from impoverished-language environments have heard 32 million fewer words than the average middle-class child) - important information for our educators in a week where it was discovered that almost 10% of eleven-year-old boys in the UK have reading problems.
I could keep going for hours with interesting thoughts from this book, but instead I will suggest that you read it yourself! show less
One of the most fascinating aspects of modern neuroscience (for a pop-science consumer like me) is that we are increasingly learning that things which seem very simple can actually involve multiple parts of the brain working in co-ordination. Apparently Capgrass syndrome, in which people believe that a close family member has been replaced with an identical imposter, comes about because the bit of brain which recognises that person is working, but the bit which provides the emotional connection has gone awry. Equally, it's only around the age of six that children can understand a phrase like 'left of the blue wall', and if you knock out an adult's language-processing ability by making them repeat nonsense phrases show more while they do the exercise, they can't locate something that's 'left of the blue wall' either.
The relevance of all this is that Proust And The Squid is about what actually happens in our brains while we read, and it turns out to be tremendously complex. For readers of English, three different parts of our brains are involved in simply processing the words in front of our eyes (for more regularly-spelled languages like Spanish, it's two and for logosyllabic languages like Chinese or, apparently, ancient Sumerian, it's four).
Even more incredible is what happens immediately after that. If we read a random collection of letters, say 'mbli', the brain processes the letters then goes quiet; if it's a real word - like 'limb' - all sorts of connections start to fire. "The difference between the two arrangements of the same letters ... was almost half a cortex." In fact, at one point in this fascinating book, Wolf describes the brain processes which take place in the first half a second after a word is read. It takes eight pages.
And as fluent readers, we do this so quickly that we also have the mental space to think about what we are reading means - not just word + word + word + word. One of Wolf's points, in fact, is the way that reading helps the mind to open doors, to fire off other connections and thoughts. It's entirely appropriate, therefore, that this book made my mind spark trains of thought like fireworks.
One note: Wolf is not a popular science writer but an expert in the subject who is trying to write accessibly. She does so very effectively, partly because she can make the subject so fascinating. (I found the third part of the book, which deals with dyslexia, the most 'sciencey', probably because I was less interested in it than the first two - about the history of written language and then about the brain processes).
She also draws interesting conclusions from the science about childhood education, for example the long-term impact of 'word poverty' (by the age of five, some children from impoverished-language environments have heard 32 million fewer words than the average middle-class child) - important information for our educators in a week where it was discovered that almost 10% of eleven-year-old boys in the UK have reading problems.
I could keep going for hours with interesting thoughts from this book, but instead I will suggest that you read it yourself! show less
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Author Information
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Maryanne Wolf is the John DiBiaggio Professor OF Citizenship and Public Service, and Director of the Center for Reading and Language Research, at Tufts University.
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- Original publication date
- 2007
- Dedication
- I dedicate this book to all the members of my family... past, present, and still to come.
- First words
- I have lived my life in the service of words: finding where they hide in the convoluted recesses of the brain, studying their layers of meaning and form, and teaching their secrets to the young.
- Quotations
- "Words and music are the tracks of human evolution." —John S. Dunne
"Knowing how something originated often is the best clue to how it works." —Terrence Deacon - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)A book about how our species learned to leap beyond the text shouldn't have a last sentence. Gentle readers, it is all yours...
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