Lecture
Reading is one of the basic forms of speech activity, performing the most important social functions. "Without language and writing, the experience of many generations of people would be irretrievably lost, and each new generation would be forced to begin anew the most difficult process of learning about the world." (FOOTNOTE: Afanasyev V.T. Fundamentals of Philosophical Knowledge. Moscow, 1968). Reading is one of the complex and significant forms of a person's mental activity, which performs psychological and social functions. Here it should above all be noted what significance reading has in the formation and moral upbringing of the personality, and in enriching a person with knowledge.
At present, reading is regarded "... as a purposeful activity that can change views, deepen understanding, recreate experience, stimulate intellectual and emotional growth, change behavior, and through all of this contribute to the development of a rich and stable personality." (FOOTNOTE: Gray W.S. Hay Well do Adults Read. Chicago, 1956, p. 33). Goldschneider et al.). Many researchers, in the past and in our own time, have studied reading from its various aspects — its structure and functions, its role in the schooling and upbringing of children, and in the formation of their personality and behavior.
A brief analysis of the history of research on reading shows that its study spans more than a century, if the well-known studies by the classic figures of neurology on reading and its impairment are counted among the earliest (Dax, 1835; Broca, 1862; Wernicke, 1872, et al.). From the 1870s onward, a number of monographs of a psychological orientation appeared (B. Erdmann and R. Dodge, A. Troshin, I.B.O'Brien, et al.), in which reading was studied as a whole — its history and role in the development of humanity, its structure, and its connection with other mental processes. Later, a number of studies appeared that examined an important phenomenon — eye movement and its role in the process of reading (Lavall, Miller, Braun).
The important role of eye movement in reading was established, as was the existence of different movements performing unequal roles: regression (checking, monitoring what has been read, and its interconnection with the subsequent segment of text) and forward eye jumps, which perform the role of anticipation, of foreseeing the meaning being grasped, among others. It was also shown that the ratio of different eye movements — forward and backward through the text, pauses — is never constant and changes depending on various factors — the text itself, the conditions of reading, the reader's attitudes, the reader's ability to penetrate the meaning, and others. All this points to the complexity of visual perception within the structure of reading and to its particular tasks.
Early and contemporary researchers agreed on one thing: reading — ' is a non-uniform mental process, and researchers regard the non-uniformity of reading as one of the characteristics that make it a complex process both to master and to investigate. Thus, A.N. Sokolov wrote that reading, on the one hand, is a process of sensory cognition, while on the other — it represents a mediation, through speech, of the reflection of reality, since the object of perception is a written verbal message. A.R. Luria likewise repeatedly drew attention to the complexities of the psychology of reading arising from the various mental processes that stand in complex interaction within its psychological content. He wrote that reading is essentially a process of re-encoding one set of symbols — visual (graphic) ones — into another system of symbols — oral speech (articulatory) ones. It is on the basis of these complex re-encodings that the process of decoding, of understanding the message, takes place.
The complexity of the structure of reading and the difficulties of studying it have led to the emergence of different aspects in its investigation.
Some foreign researchers examine reading from the standpoint of its uniqueness: viewing it now as a process that includes, as a whole, communication, seeing, listening, and writing (R.Strang), now as a process into which all types of thinking, imagination, and also emotional processes are incorporated (A.Gates).
Studies of the problem of the interaction between reading technique and comprehension, studies of the genesis of reading, of its psychological structure at different stages of acquiring reading, studies directed toward examining methodological and theoretical questions of teaching reading, studies of the role of the reading material (the text) and its characteristics in reading — in the recognition and comprehension of the text — these are socio-psychological and linguistic studies.
A special place among the directions named above is occupied by the study of the problem of the interaction between the structure of reading, its technique, and comprehension of what is read. In this connection different models of meaningful reading have appeared ("feature categorization," "analysis through synthesis," the "logogen" model, and others). Works also appeared in which the question of the interaction between the sensorimotor and semantic levels in reading and the role of context in comprehension was discussed (J. Morton). In the works of J. Morton it was shown that, in an experienced reader, the sensorimotor side is subordinated to the main task of reading, to its goal — comprehension. In the works of F. Smith, a point of view was set out on reading as a process in which the recognition of the meanings of words precedes the recognition of the words themselves. K.S. Goodman likewise considers word recognition to be a by-product of comprehension. And the well-known German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer wrote: "Everything written is a kind of alienated speech and is in need of having its signs converted back into speech and meaning" FOOTNOTE: Gadamer H.-G. Truth and Method. Moscow: Progress, 1988).
The position of R. Jakobson on this question is quite interesting. In studying the process of reading, he wrote of its complexity as a mental process and of its connection with other HMFs. Comprehension of what is written when reading he, like a number of other researchers, considered the main function of the process of reading. However, R. Jakobson also attached enormous importance to the letter signs, and especially to their differences, for the correct comprehension of what is written. Letter signs and their differences are so informative that, with their help, one can not only decipher the content encoded in them, the meaning and the thought, but one can even comprehend a language whose sound is unknown (Coptic, for example); for this, one needs to grasp the differences in the graphics of the letters of that language. If we do not know the sound of some language, R. Jakobson wrote, then in that case the letters "...function for us in the role of purely differential elements: with their help the meanings of words are differentiated, but they themselves are devoid of their own meaning. ...in this situation, letters, from a functional point of view, carry the same load as phonemes." And further: "...the more easily the whole variety of letters can be reduced to simple and ordered graphic distinctions, the greater the researcher's chances of grasping the language through its writing system" (FOOTNOTE: Jakobson R. Selected Works. Moscow: Progress, 1985).
These statements about reading, about the role of the letter in the process of reading, speak to the extreme complexity of this process and to its enormous role in a person's mental activity, on the one hand, and to the commonality among the different modalities of the process of perception — the acoustic and the optical — consisting in the fact that both the letter and the phoneme carry a meaning-differentiating load. Thanks to this, the meanings of words are understood and differentiated, and the main function and task of reading, as R. Jakobson and many other scholars believe, is comprehension of what is written through the decoding of the meanings of words that stand behind the letters and their combinations. Thus, the point of view that comprehension takes priority in reading, and that it influences the recognition (reading) of the word, of the text, is supported by many researchers.
And most of them are inclined to consider the visual link in reading to be inessential, and comprehension of the text — to be the main or sole task of reading. At the same time, comprehension in reading is regarded by them as a process that has its own regularities.
An analysis of the literature shows that most approaches to the problem of reading and of comprehension in reading, for all their differences, are united by one common position, which found expression in the works of S.L. Rubinstein, who wrote that any text is only a condition for mental activity: what is objectively contained in the text can also take on a subjective form in the reader's mind, and this subjective form of existence is the result of the reader's own mental activity.
Reading as a thought process was also examined by other researchers, in particular Gadamer, who wrote: "Whoever wants to understand a text is constantly engaged in projecting meaning. As soon as some meaning begins to become clear in the text, he makes a preliminary sketch of the meaning of the text as a whole." And further: "... from the very beginning we read the text expecting to find in it this or that particular meaning."
Close attention to the process of reading, but now from the side of its pathology, is also found among neurologist researchers as far back as the end of the 19th century. The reading disorder (alexia) was described by many neurologist researchers (Wernicke, Dejerine, Wolpert, V. Oltushevsky, et al.). The subject of their research was mainly reading impairment associated with defects of optical perception. In 1892, Dejerine described pure word blindness occurring against a background of preserved speech. He distinguished two forms of speech impairment: letter blindness and word blindness. Cases of optical alexia were also described by other researchers (Wolpert, Katz, et al.). The most precise clinical picture of the reading disorder and its various forms was described in 1898 by V. Oltushevsky. He distinguished five different forms of reading impairment, including isolated alexia, in which patients see the letters but do not distinguish them and cannot name them; associative alexia (associative word blindness), which arises with a lesion of the angular gyrus (giri anguilaris). According to Wernicke's classification, this alexia coincides with transcortical aphasia. Motor
the author singles out these difficulties in reading as an independent form of alexia, associated, in his view, with a lesion of the middle associative center; a lesion in the third frontal gyrus leads to alexia arising from motor "word muteness"; and finally, as a result of "word deafness," arising, in the author's view, with a lesion of the first parietal gyrus, the patient likewise turns out to be unable to read.
For the study of the pathology of HMFs, as was said above, including for the study of alexia, it was characteristic of that time to correlate the general clinical picture of the impairment of a complex function with a narrow focal lesion of the brain. The researchers of that time were not yet able to give a full analysis of reading impairment, or to approach in any properly correct way the study and description of its psychophysiological foundations, its forms, and its connection with the brain.
In contemporary neuropsychology, the study of alexia has found its development in the works of A.R. Luria, Zh.I. Shif, B.G. Ananyev, L.S. Tsvetkova, N. Geschwind, A. Harris and F. Roswell, Hirsch, et al. In doing so, foreign researchers of reading disorders focused their attention mainly on dyslexia in children (Monroe, Bender, Delacato, Applebee), seeing its causes either in physiological individuality (Gallagher), or in insufficient development of hemispheric dominance of the brain (MacD.Critchley, Delacato), a low level of intelligence (Worster-Drought), or, finally, in congenital features (Rheinhold). Analogous approaches are also presented in the analysis of reading disorders in adult patients with brain lesions. In connection with this, the problem of the structure of alexia is discussed either exclusively at the linguistic level, or, conversely, at the level of analysis of physiological mechanisms. Some researchers reduce alexia entirely to perceptual impairments (for example, Velluntino, Steger, and Kandel), while others believe that defects in the processing of verbal information lie at its foundation.
Domestic (Russian) researchers, in studying alexia, proceeded and continue to proceed from different methodological and theoretical positions. In the works of A.R. Luria, Zh.I. Shif, L.S. Tsvetkova, et al., reading is regarded as a complex intellectual process, multilevel and multi-link in structure, and active in the way it unfolds. Researchers of alexia also proceed from ideas about the role of chronogenicity in the structure of reading: in adult readers, the structure of the reading process, and consequently the mechanisms and picture of its impairment in alexia, differs sharply from the impairment of the reading process in children.
A correct understanding of the pathology of reading requires, above all, knowledge of its psychological structure. Contemporary studies of the psychology of reading, of its formation and development, considerably facilitate the study of the mechanisms of the breakdown of reading and the identification of those forms that alexia takes on depending on the locus of the brain lesion.
Comments