Incorporating cognitive, neuropsychological, and sociocultural perspectives, this authoritative text explains the psychological processes involved in reading and describes applications for educational practice. The book follows a clear developmental sequence, from the impact of the early family environment through the acquisition of emergent literacy skills and the increasingly complex abilities required for word recognition, reading fluency, vocabulary growth, and text comprehension. Linguistic and cultural factors in individual reading differences are examined, as are psychological dimensions of reading motivation and the personal and societal benefits of reading. Pedagogical Features *End-of-chapter discussion questions and suggestions for further reading. *Explicit linkages among theory, research, standards (including the Common Core State Standards), and instruction. *Engaging case studies at the beginning of each chapter. *Technology Toolbox explores the pros and cons of computer-assisted learning.

Since the 1970s, much has been learned about the reading process from research by cognitive psychologists. This book summarizes that important work and puts it into a coherent framework.

In this book, two psychologists apply principles of cognitive psychology to understanding reading. Unlike most other books on the subject, this one presents a consistent theoretical point of view and applies it to the acquisition of reading and what the skilled reader does.The first part of The Psychology of Reading covers perceptual learning, the development of cognitive strategies, the development of language, the nature of writing systems, and an extensive review of the research on word recognition.In the second part of the book, the authors look closely at abilities that children bring to school before learning to read. They describe the acquisition of initial reading skills and transition to skilled reading, the nature of the reading process in adult readers, and the ways people learn from reading.The book's third part takes up questions people frequently ask about reading -- such as reading by deaf children, dyslexia, the influence of nonstandard dialects on learning to read, comparison of reading achievement across different nations and different languages, and the debatable virtues of "speed reading."The authors conclude that reading cannot be understood simply as associative learning -- that is, the learning of an arbitrary code connecting written symbols and their sounds. Reading involves higher-level mental processes such as the discovery of rules and order, and the extraction of structured, meaningful information.

Cognitive psychologists have discovered that reading represents a natural laboratory for studying almost all cognitive processes -- from sensation and perception to comprehension and reasoning. This introductory textbook examines the important principles of cognitive psychology that pertain to reading, but it is not written for the cognitive psychologist. Though grounded in the latest research, this revision maintains the objective of the first edition -- to provide a highly accessible introduction to students approaching the subject for the first time. Nearly a decade has passed since publication of the first edition of this book. During this period, research on reading has continued at the breakneck pace established in the 1970s, and the growth of knowledge has been substantial. Because the development of knowledge about reading has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, this new edition provides a timely update of the previous edition, building on principles developed in the earlier book. It is intended to be of use to readers from a variety of disciplines, with differing levels of knowledge about reading. Students of educational psychology and in psychology of reading courses will find this text particularly helpful.

Originally published in 1984, this new introductory text fulfilled a need amongst both psychology and education students for a book which dealt with reading in a way that explored areas beyond the strictly practical question of how to teach children to read. Previous books on the psychology of reading had often concentrated on the analytic approach, in which reading had been seen in terms of a set of interconnected sub-skills and the experimental study of these components had become an end in itself. As a result, although great advances had been made in our understanding of certain aspects of the process, psychological studies of reading had increasingly been seen by teachers and others as unduly abstract. The Psychology of Reading goes back to first principles and attempts to set reading in its context alongside other cognitive activities, particularly those involving memory and perceptual processes. Professor Kennedy argues that it is wrong to set reading apart as a ‘skill’ when it needs to be understood against a background of work in cognitive psychology. Reading is a social phenomenon concerned with human communication, and in this context it must be seen in terms of an interaction between writer and reader. The book explores the nature of this interaction and the various stylistic and other devices which sustain the ‘contract’ between reader and writer. In particular, the psychological processes which allow a reader to make sensible assumptions about a writer’s intentions are dealt with in detail. No theory of reading, the author argues, should ignore the purpose of the enterprise. Similarly, explaining success and failure in teaching children to read may well hinge on an understanding of what children think reading is about. The style of this book is concise and largely non-technical. The Psychology of Reading will be welcomed as stimulating and demanding by experts and non-specialist general readers alike.

The last 20 years have witnessed a revolution in reading research. Cognitive psychologists, using high-speed computers to aid in the collection and analysis of data, have developed tools that have begun to answer questions that were previously thought unanswerable. These tools allow for a "chronometric," or moment-to-moment, analysis of the reading process. Foremost among them is the use of the record of eye movements to help reveal the underlying perceptual and cognitive processes of reading. This volume provides a coherent framework for the research accomplished on the reading process over the past 15 years. It emphasizes how readers go about extracting information from the printed page and how they comprehend the text.