prospectus

We’re frequently encouraged, starting at a young age, to turn off the television and pick up books. In a country with such a high literacy rate (99%, as dictated by the CIA World Factbook), there are many social and academic pressures to encourage reading. The question we often ask ourselves (and each other) is that, while reading is necessary to keep up with the rapid pace of information speeding through our daily lives, what is the importance of reading/being literate to us? Physiologically, does it make us smarter? Does it improve memory? Psychologically, does it really open up as many new perspectives as we think it does—more so than other media sources? In today’s world, we are constantly using reading. Many believe that reading is somewhat futile in a lifestyle where information is available in so many other vehicles, but I will show how reading actually improves/conditions the brain’s given faculties.

I plan to review the evidence supported in a few of my sources (How The Brain Learns to Read by David Sousa, Proust and Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain by Maryanne Wolf, and Reading and the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention by Stanislas Dehaene) to generally back this point up, but other sources will be cited/utilized along the way. I also plan to insert various images of brain scans, such as PET scans, fMRI scans, and possibly EEG scans, to show the arousal of the brain when reading as opposed to other activities.

I have also contacted UF faculty regarding research projects they are currently facing, specifically regarding reading and brain activity. I hope, particularly with time constraints, that I might be able to utilize some of their findings.

The largest counterargument that I see myself running into includes (but is not limited to) comparing the brain’s stimulation during reading to other activities that require rapid visual processing or “using the imagination” (for example, heading a story be told, or watching a fast paced advertisement). I hope to do further research regarding a unique quality of reading and its effect on our brains that will illustrate my point better than the functional images previously mentioned.

While I have the makings of a “game plan” for this research project, I hope that the writing process will make me more inquisitive about the facts and statistics I include. I hope to do a lot of learning with the growth of my report, not only with the information at my fingertips which is completely relevant to my path of study, but also with learning how to make my writing more concise and organized.