Psycholinguist Daniel Zagar explains why reading remains a fundamental tool for child development, access to knowledge and the construction of thought, by deciphering the cognitive and social mechanisms that make it irreplaceable.
Why is reading today considered essential to child development?
Daniel ZagarÂ: “Reading is access to what is written. And writing is speech. Faithful speech, independent of time and space. Having access to speech means having autonomous access to, potentially, everything that has been said by the community, whenever we want, where we want, and in all areas. This is true for adults, and it is also true for children. For the child, what is most important is of course access to education. There is no benefit specific to reading, any more than there would be to, say, learning to drive a car. But when you know how to drive, you can move around independently. If I learn to drive will I know the geography better? Yes, probably… but it’s combined with what you do about driving. It is the same for reading. »
Can we really say that reading makes you more intelligent, and on what mechanisms does this rely?
“Here too the answer is twofold. Reading is a means of accessing knowledge: in this, we can say that it makes you more “intelligent”. On the other hand, knowing how to read is a cognitive expertise. But there is no evidence to suggest that the benefit of acquiring this expertise on cognition is greater than the acquisition of another expertise.
“For the child, what is most important is of course access to education. HAS”
Daniel Zagar, psycholinguist.
What are the most visible effects of reading on language and writing?
“Reading expertise considerably modifies our perception of language. We can say that writing “materializes” speech. Speech is fleeting, words fly away as soon as they are spoken. With writing, speech becomes stable: we can manipulate it. For example, we can store all the words of the language in a dictionary, with their definition. We can analyze the structure of sentences and construct grammars. The sciences of language, linguistics, are products of the invention of writing. More generally, it is all of our knowledge, including sciences, which is the fruit of writing and reading. Writing also plays the role of an external memory: this ranges from the shopping list to all of humanity’s knowledge stored on the web or in encyclopedias. Due to the accessible nature of writing, this knowledge can be arranged in different ways and enable increasingly sophisticated reasoning. In addition, the digitization of writing and the mechanical manipulation of writing make it possible to considerably increase the use of this “external memory”, which is what ChatGPT allows.
Does reading on screen have the same benefits as reading on paper?
“Yes. Playback effects are media independent. On the other hand, the ease with which we read will not be the same depending on whether we read on paper, on a computer screen or on a mobile phone. »
What role do parents actually play in learning and liking to read?
“It is the example set by adults, and first and foremost parents, who familiarize the child with this or that practice. The same goes for reading. But what is decisive in the motivation to learn to read is curiosity and the appetite to independently acquire new information and, often for children, stories and fiction. But in this area, reading faces strong competition from screens which are easier to access and do not require any learning. It’s up to parents to limit competition.”
If we had to convince in one sentence: why is it absolutely necessary to make children read today?
“Reading is knowing the world. If you don’t read, you are a bit in your own corner, you are subject to what people want to tell you, you know about the world only what they tell you orally. This is very important because in human civilization reading has been the gateway to group and global social communication.”
Do you think that new uses put it in danger?
“Nothing will replace information through writing, but it is very possible that we will return to societies where only part of the population will read. “That’s possible.”
