How Reading Makes Us More Human

In “How Reading Makes Us More Human”, Karen Prior highlights points about why we, as a society, value the learned skill of reading. Throughout the article she branches off to talk about Anne Murphy Paul, who argues that reading develops cognitive skills that are used during interaction such as empathy. Not only do we develop these skills partly through reading experiences, we become smarter and nicer by them. During our reading experiences we are deeply ingrained in the author’s text. We feel the characters the way the writer intends for us to feel. In a sense, we are the writer’s puppets. Prior goes on to bring up the fact that reading is perhaps the main human activities that sets us apart from other animals. Reading and writing are secondary forms of communication but they are only secondary because they are not innate, they are learned. She briefly mentions how humans have a sort of impulse to read, making it a very spiritual activity.

This article is featured simply for the fact that it goes into depth why we, human beings, read at all. When someone is choosing a new novel or any form of text to read, subconsciously they are looking to challenge the previous ways they have already experienced. The brain craves more and more reading, like it's an addiction. Obtaining the skill of reading happens for most of childhood and well into adulthood. Literacy grows as the brain develops, thus making it possible for us to create and retain new words. The takes place much the same was as dictionary editors expand on already existing dictionaries, as the previous TED talk mentions.

#literature #communication #skills #interaction #experience