Reading is an advanced skill and a relatively new phenomenon among humans. While literacy is a crucial ability a child must develop to obtain knowledge and navigate society, it doesn’t come easily to many children. The process of how the brain learns to read is complex and often misunderstood.
To many people’s surprise, the ability to read is not primarily about visual processing. Rather, it’s a phonological (sound)-based process that requires the brain to make connections between speech and orthography (printed letters).
An understanding of reading and the brain impacts how educators teach phonics. Today, specific evidence-based strategies equip children to learn how to read more effectively. In this article, we explore some of the fascinating science behind reading acquisition and present several practical ways you can nurture strong readers.
The Science of Reading and How It Works in the Brain
Reading is not innate or hardwired in humans like spoken language is. While people can acquire spoken language naturally, they generally need explicit instruction in learning to read.
Why Phonics is Vital to Reading Development
Phonics plays a leading role in reading education. It teaches children the relationships between alphabetical letters and the sounds in language. This foundational skill allows children to decode unfamiliar words by blending individual sounds together.
Neuroscientists Mark Seidenberg and Stanislas Dehaene have made groundbreaking discoveries about how the brain learns to read. Seidenberg, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, extensively studied the neural mechanisms involved in reading acquisition. Dehaene, a professor at the Collège de France, conducted influential research using brain imaging techniques to understand the brain’s reading circuitry.
Through their work on the cognitive science of reading, they discovered the importance of how phonics is taught—particularly involving the brain’s phonological pathway.
The Phonological Pathway
According to Seidenberg and Dehaene’s research, a large portion of the brain’s ability to read is due to the phonological pathway. Seidenberg (2017) says that the importance of the phonological pathway in beginning reading, “is about as close to conclusive as research on human behavior can get.” This phonological pathway allows the brain to convert letters in print into verbal language by linking the visual symbols (letters) to their associated sounds. Then, the sounds of those letters can be blended into words.
Neuroimaging studies by Dehaene have revealed that a specific region in the brain’s left occipitotemporal cortex (the orthographic processor), dubbed the “visual word form area,” becomes specialized for this mapping process as children learn to read. This area connects visual inputs (alphabetical letters) to the brain’s language systems, enabling the conversion of written words into spoken language.
In contrast, the brain’s visual pathway relies on recognizing words as whole units or shapes. The visual pathway plays a secondary role in reading. While this pathway can be useful for quickly recognizing a limited number of familiar words, it’s inefficient for children learning to read new words. Early readers heavily rely on decoding to make sense of new or unfamiliar words, which requires first breaking them down into their sound components.
The phonological pathway is crucial for developing skilled reading abilities. Children who struggle to map letters to sounds and blend those sounds often experience significant reading difficulties.
Limitations of Visual Cues in Reading
Today, we know that the brain learns to read through the connection between the phonological pathway with the visual pathway. However, many traditional reading instructional methods have relied heavily on visual strategies, such as memorizing whole words or focusing on word patterns.
Since the science of reading has advanced in recent decades, experts now know that these visual approaches are limited. They can hinder the development of proficient reading skills.
One study by Seidenberg observed the effectiveness of different reading instruction methods. They found that children who received explicit, systematic phonics instruction outperformed those who were taught using a whole-word or visual-based approach. Explicit instruction noticeably improved kids’ ability to decode new words accurately—especially for children with specific learning disorders such as dyslexia.
Dehaene (2011) adds to this concept by explaining that the brain can identify words so quickly it creates the illusion of whole-word reading. However, “all the evidence to date suggests that visual words are being analyzed into their elementary components before the whole word can be put back together and recognized,” he stated. “This decomposition is so fast, parallel, and efficient as to seem almost instantaneous.”
Your Role in Children’s Reading Development
Whether you’re a teacher or a parent, you play a significant role in how your child’s brain learns to read. While the science behind reading development can be complex, having a basic understanding can support decisions for your child’s learning. Here are some practices to incorporate.
Explicit, Systematic Phonics
Providing systematic and explicit phonics instruction is important for teaching word-reading. This type of instruction prioritizes letter-sound relationships. It provides opportunities for children to practice blending sounds into words and segment words into individual sounds, rather than trying to memorize whole words visually.
Be Critical of Reading Programs
The idea that reading instruction should limit phonics and rely on visual memorization is still pervasive in education. Teachers and parents must take a critical look at reading programs to see if systematic phonics instruction is a dominant component. It should be suitable for beginner reading instruction.
Reading Aloud
Reading aloud to children and engaging in dialogic reading (where the child is actively involved in discussing the story) can foster language development and phonological awareness. Seidenberg (2017) says that the “most significant reading-related activity for young children is still being read to.” However, reading to children will not guarantee they will become readers. Systematic guidance is still necessary.
Playful Activities
Activities like rhyming games, identifying the initial sounds in words, and clapping out syllables can further enhance children’s sensitivity to the sound structure of language. Phonological awareness activities like this have been shown to help children develop stronger reading skills.
Start Early
Ideally, these strategies should be introduced early and consistently in a child’s life. High-quality phonics instruction is a key predictor of later reading success.
Help Kids Learn to Read: Phonics.org
Neuroscience proves the brain learns to read primarily through a phonological, sound-based process that maps written letters to their corresponding language sounds. This understanding underscores the importance of evidence-based, phonics-focused reading instruction that aligns with the brain’s process of literacy development.
By prioritizing systematic phonics instruction and activities that build phonological awareness, educators and parents can lay a strong foundation for their children to become confident readers.
Explore more resources at Phonics.org to learn about implementing these effective, science-backed strategies in your classroom or home!
