The Neuropsychology of Reading

There are two main traditions in the psychology of reading. The most familiar tradition is educational, based on the study of children learning to read: its theoretical base is in the theories of learning that were so dominant a feature of academic psychology in the 1940s and 50s. The second tradition is neurological, stemming from the observations of neurologists around the turn of the century about specific reading impairments resulting from localised injury to the brain. This tradition has revived in the last decade or so, largely because of the recent merging of psychology and neurology into the discipline of neuropsychology. lt also coincides with a shift within mainstream academic psychology, away from behaviourism and an emphasis on learning, and toward so-called cognitive psychology with its emphasis on the processes of human thought. Cognitive psychology has been increasingly drawn toward theories of brain function, and this is why current ideas about reading tend to be neurological rather than educational in emphasis.