Childhood Development and Reading

Several weeks ago, I came across an article on the web. It was on a page that I usually ignore, the msn opening page. It is usually filled with a lot of flashing, scrolling, twinkling glitzy fluff moving about the screen. However, I did notice an interesting article title. It was an article written by a Martha Brockenbrough titled "What Effect Reading Has on Our Minds". This article talks about the importance reading to the development of children's minds and the development of their intellectual capacities. The article does not speak of reading from a computer screen, but from books. And that reminded me of another article that I had read that did mention the difference between book reading and computer screen reading. That article was one that I read in the Wilson Quarterly Autumn Fall edition. (Article not available to upload)

The Autumn edition had featured on its cover, a section of articles involving the sugject of the future of the book. It was put forth in one of the articles, written by Christine Rosen, that this process of taking in information during the process of reading a book, whether for work or for leisure, involves a physiologically different process than what is required for scanning for information from a compluter screen.

I was able to find Christine Rosen on the New Atlantic (an online Journal of Technology and Society) publication blog, and on it I found a very informative but lenghty post called the Image Culture. In this article from the New Atlantis Fall 2005 issue, she writes about the dependence on images as a means of gathering information as opposed to thoughtful reliance on reading and discussion of ideas.