The Neuroscience of Reading with Children

Written by Dr. Sam Wass

Neuroscience of why physical aspects of reading

Sitting with a child on your lap and regular daytime routines are calming and attention-promoting and relationship-promoting for both child and parent 

Some of the physical aspects of reading are thought to be crucial. First, reading often involves physical closeness. When we are close to one another, our body rhythms (such as our breathing patterns, heart rate and movement patterns) ‘tune in’ to one another (1,2). Children’s body rhythms are naturally more messy and unpredictable than adults’ body rhythms (3,4), and periods of physical closeness between the child and adult can help the child to establish stronger, more stable, adult-like rhythms (5–7), which promote calmness and sustained attention (3,8). The fact that reading also happens at consistent times of day – such as a book at bedtime – further helps long-term body rhythms such as sleep-wake transitions (9,10).  

These periods of closeness and mutual attunedness that develop during shared child-adult reading are also thought to have additional benefits. Being in the same state as someone else at the same time is thought to help establish and maintain empathy (11) and feelings of affiliation (12); and, through that, to strengthen child-adult relationships (13,14).  

Neuroscience of child-led book-sharing  

When you’re reading and sharing books with children you’re continually changing and adapting what you say, and how you say it, based on the child’s understanding and communicative gestures. And why that’s such an effective form of learning for children. 

One of the primary benefits of face-to-face book sharing – which is thought to explain why face-to-face learning is so much more effective than learning from screens (15) – is that, during face-to-face interaction, adults are constantly monitoring the attention, engagement and understanding of the child (16) and adapting both what they say and how they say it dependent on that (4,17). Face-to-face book sharing is dialogic, active and child-led18, which promotes effective learning (19–21). 

Neuroscience of why stories are important.

Stories by definition have a structure – with a beginning and a middle and an end. Evidence that children, especially children from under-privileged backgrounds, often struggle both to generate structured activities in their own play and to track structure in stories when they’re happening. Pointing to potential benefits of this for children. 

Stories are intrinsically predictable, in multiple ways: stories by definition have a beginning, middle and end (22), and often contain predictable rhythms and rhymes (21,23). Also, we often revisit the same story multiple times, and book sharing often happens at predictable times of day (9). Children growing up in under-privileged settings tend to experience environments that are less predictable, in multiple ways (24). Introducing predictability helps the developing brain to learn to anticipate and to prepare for change before it occurs (25), which promotes attention and learning (26), reduces stress (25), and helps our brains and bodies function more efficiently (10). For this reason, the potential benefits of shared child-parent reading for families living in adversity operate across multiple levels, including language, attention, stress, and the parent-child relationship. 

Neuroscience of child-language – how/why language content with exaggerated rhythms helps bootstrap children’s brain processing of language and literacy

Brains are rhythmic: individual cells talk to each other through coordinated patterns of firing known as oscillations (27). Language is rhythmic too (28), and speech rhythms ‘piggyback’ on naturally occurring brain rhythms (29,30), which helps us to produce and understand language (28). Children’s brain rhythms are naturally weaker (26), and there is evidence that child-directed language, which naturally has exaggerated rhythms (31) through features such as metre and rhyme (23), can help to ‘nudge’ a child’s brain into strong, stable rhythmic activity (32,33). This helps the developing brain to detect patterns and meaning in language (32).  

References

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2. Shamay-Tsoory, S. Neuroscience of social touch: Emerging directions and challenges. Soc Neurosci 19, 229–230 (2024).

3. Wass, S. V. How orchids concentrate? The relationship between physiological stress reactivity and cognitive performance during infancy and early childhood. Neurosci Biobehav Rev (2018).

4. Beebe, B. et al. A systems view of mother–infant face-to-face communication. Dev Psychol 52, 556 (2016).

5. Feldman, R. From Biological Rhythms to Social Rhythms: Physiological Precursors of Mother–Infant Synchrony. Dev Psychol 1, 175–188 (2006).

6. Stern, D. N. The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology. (Routledge, 2018).

7. Wass, S. V. et al. Annual Research Review: ‘There, the dance is, at the still point of the turning world.’ Dynamic systems perspectives on co-regulation and dysregulation during early development. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (2024).

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10. Lancaster, K. L. & Wass, S. V. Finding order in chaos: influences of environmental complexity and predictability on development. Trends Cogn Sci (2024).

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16. Wass, S. V et al. Parental neural responsivity to infants’ visual attention: how mature brains influence immature brains during social interaction. PLoS Biol 16, e2006328 (2018).

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22. Chang, C. H. C., Nastase, S. A. & Hasson, U. Information flow across the cortical timescale hierarchy during narrative construction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, e2209307119 (2022).

23. Labendzki, P. , Goupil, L. , & Wass, S. V. Temporal patterns in the complexity of child-directed song lyrics reflect their functions. pre-print (2024).

24. Evans, G. W. & Wachs, T. D. Chaos and its influence on children’s development. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association (2010).

25. Peters, A., McEwen, B. S. & Friston, K. Uncertainty and stress: Why it causes diseases and how it is mastered by the brain. Prog Neurobiol 156, 164–188 (2017).

26. Wass, S. V, Amadó, M. P. & Ives, J. Oscillatory entrainment to our early social or physical environment and the emergence of volitional control. Dev Cogn Neurosci 54, 101102 (2022).

27. Buzsaki, G. Rhythms of the Brain. (Oxford University Press, 2006).

28. Poeppel, D. & Assaneo, M. F. Speech rhythms and their neural foundations. Nat Rev Neurosci 21, 322–334 (2020).

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