Our brains are amazing. They keep us safe
and allow us to relate to others. They enable us to think and feel. They create memories and connect new and old information. And our brain
is never more amazing than when we read.
When we read our brain must do multiple
mental tasks and keep track of huge amounts of information at the same time. Reading
involves:
·
multiple sub-processes in the
brain
·
activation in multiple areas of
the brain
·
linguistic and non-linguistic
processing
·
interconnectivity of the
cognitive and emotional networks
·
visual recognition of letters
·
comprehension at the discourse
level
·
articulation.
Reading is a complex skill, as described by
neurobiologist Siusana Kweldju: ‘reading involves all of the regions of the
brain, because it involves all cognitive functioning of humans -- verbal and
non-verbal’. The cognitive functions involved include ‘attention, planning,
abstract reasoning, predicting, inhibition, use of strategies, problem solving,
working memory, and long-term storage memory and retrieval of vocabulary and
concepts, the procedural skill of retrieval, the use of grammatical knowledge,
and the motor mechanism for visual processing, and production’.
In simple terms, in order to read and
understand a piece of text, our brain must recognise letters and words, apply
grammatical knowledge, figure out the grammatical (syntactical) meaning, and
then place this in the context of our world knowledge and make inferences of
the writer’s intended meaning. We must hold specific pieces of information in
working memory while at the same time retrieving information from long-term
memory. We must use both linguistic and non-linguistic processing, involving the
interconnection of the cognitive and emotional networks.
What emerges from this bird’s eye view of
how the human brain reads is that clear writing is about more than using common
words and short sentences. Essentially, writers need to reduce cognitive load –
the effort that readers must make. Plain language practitioners use all sorts
of complex measurements, techniques and rules, but fundamentally, reducing reader
effort requires two things:
1) organising and
connecting information clearly, and
2) using familiar
words and constructs.
Modern brain imaging and research into artificial
intelligence have shown in detail what regions and networks in the brain are
involved in reading. Scientists can even see greater brain activation when a
sentence is ‘incongruent’ – unexpected or difficult in some way. And studies have
also shown that text that demands too much effort leads to demotivation – in plain
terms, the reader stops reading. Ultimately the goal of plain language is to
keep readers reading by minimising effort and maximising information gain.
Sources:
‘Neurobiology research findings: How the brain works during reading’, Siusana Kweldju, The Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO), PASAA 50, July - December 2015, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1088308.pdf
‘Evaluating Text Quality: The continuum
from text-focused to reader-focused methods’, Karen A. Schriver, https://archive.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/136/TR41.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d
'A 10-minute intro to scientific support for using plain language', Cheryl Stephens, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0khFucqa1E