Few factors are as crucial to success as the ability to read. It may come as a surprise, but more than half of American children read only at a basic level.
Functional illiteracy can have a domino effect: It undermines a person’s ability to get a good education and further down the line, it could also affect a parent’s ability to help their children get ahead academically.
In his new book, "Language at the Speed of Sight," cognitive neuroscientist and University of Wisconsin-Madison psychology professor Mark Seidenberg writes that the disconnect between brain science and education is a major factor in America's chronic underperformance with reading.
Seidenberg said reading is one of the oldest topics in research psychology, stretching back to the 19th century. But it's only been recently that scientists have been able to examine reading's full effect on the brain thanks to neuroimaging developments tracing how circuits interact with vision and language.
"I would say really over the last five or six years there's been a big jump in how much we've learned," he said.
According to Seidenberg, the latest research shows that the biggest determinant of a child getting on the right path to becoming a skilled reader is their spoken language experience. That, he added, is largely influenced by their environment, including the language abilities of the people who surround them at daycare, preschool and at home.
"They have to build a new bridge from print into this knowledge of spoken language they already know," he said. "So if they can just figure out how this written code links up to what they already know about spoken language, they'll be able to read."
But that often comes with huge obstacles, Seidenberg said. For one, children falling behind on their reading proficiency too often hear from their teachers to simply try harder and get in more practice. There's also a host of economic inequality issues that prevent reading progress.
The best solution, Seidenberg said, is to embrace the scientific research and adopt learning strategies that rely on phonics, a method that correlates sounds with the letters of the alphabet.