Nursery World - A Unique Child: Cognitive Development

Ways that nurseries can identify and promote children's readiness for reading are highlighted in studies considered by Kyra Karmiloff and Annette Karmiloff-Smith.

In the grand scale of human evolution, reading is a recent cultural invention. Indeed, humans have only been reading and writing for about 5,000 years, so it's unlikely that we have anything like 'genes for reading'.

Scientists now agree that evolution capitalises on old brain circuits, that learning written language reuses circuits in the brain - left occipital and temporal lobes - which evolved to support spoken language, and that learning to read restructures the brain over developmental time. So, the brains of illiterate adults are different from those of literate adults.

While almost all children will eventually read fluently, for some the process will be harder than for others. Reading difficulties are common, and often not identified until a child is several years into schooling. Yet, scientific research offers many ways to detect potential difficulties much earlier than this, thereby reducing the impact on self-esteem and on other aspects of school learning.

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