The Psychology of Reading

This new introductory text fulfills a need amongst both psychology and education students for a book which deals with reading in a way that explores areas beyond the strictly practical question of how to teach children to read.

Previous books on the psychology of reading have concentrated on the analytic approach, in which reading has often been seen in terms of a set of interconnected sub-skills and the experimental study of these components has become an end in itself. As a result, although great advances have been made in our understanding of certain aspects of the process, studies of reading have 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 in an isolated manner 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 involve interaction between writer and reader. The book explores the nature of this interaction and the various stylistic and psychological processes which allow a reader to make sense of a text.

Professor Kennedy argues that the theory of reading should not 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.