Chapter 4 - Cognitive issues in reading

Summary

Language learning is an intuitive statistical learning problem…. Research in cognitive psychology demonstrates that such implicit tallying is the raw basis of human pattern recognition, categorization, and rationalcognition.

(Ellis, 2007: 80–81)

Chapters 2 and 3 provide an outline of how reading comprehension arises out of the efficient combination of lower-level and higher-level processes. The present chapter explores more general cognitive concepts that intersect with reading comprehension. These concepts help explain the effectiveness of various components of reading abilities as they work in combination. This chapter helps explain how fluency and automaticity emerge as incremental outcomes of the implicit learning system, why extensive exposure to print is a crucial goal for reading development (to provide continual implicit learning opportunities and incremental growth of reading abilities), and how reading, and learning from texts, is supported by attentional processing, inferencing, and background knowledge of many types. These concepts and underlying cognitive processing systems are not solely involved in reading-comprehension processing; rather, they are key to all aspects of learning (including all aspects of language learning). Each of the following concepts and cognitive systems is critical for understanding the central role of cognition in reading comprehension:

1. Implicit and explicit learning

2. Frequency, associative learning, co-occurrence, and emergence

3. Attention, noticing, and consciousness

4. Inferencing

5. The role of context in L2 reading

6. The role of background knowledge in L2 reading

The importance of these cognitive concepts for reading cannot be overestimated. They constitute the foundations of learning theory for all cognitive and educational psychology. They provide the basis not only for how reading comprehension works, but also for how it develops.