Shelf Awareness
Cognitive neuroscientists are warning that humans "seem to be developing digital brains with new circuits for skimming through the torrent of information online," the Washington Post reported, adding that this "alternative way of reading is competing with traditional deep reading circuitry developed over several millennia.""I worry that the superficial way we read during the day is affecting us when we have to read with more in-depth processing," said Maryanne Wolf, a Tufts University cognitive neuroscientist and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.
Researchers are recommending closer study of the differences between text and screen reading and suggest "there are advantages to both ways of reading. There is potential for a bi-literate brain," the Post wrote.
"We can't turn back," Wolf observed. 'We should be simultaneously reading to children from books, giving them print, helping them learn this slower mode, and at the same time steadily increasing their immersion into the technological, digital age. It's both. We have to ask the question: What do we want to preserve?"
Riverrun Bookstore, Portsmouth N.H., offered an even more succinct reaction on Facebook: "We've been talking about this problem for a who---LOOK, KITTENS!!"
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