Just finished this book about a college educated woman who took a job as a sheep herder. I liked it. A life so different from mine. Being able to read well is an inherited trait, but reading for pleasure is controlled by environment. Children can’t read for pleasure if they have no books. Thank heaven for public libraries and Dolly Parton. And yes, reading problems like dyslexia are inherited.
I have six grands and the first five are all good readers. I don’t know about little Ada but she knows lots of words and loves books. Of my six, Ingrid is my only read pleasure grand. She prefers to buy books and keep ‘em ‘cause she loves them. 🤍 Siggie and Astrid read to learn about things that interest them. Clayton and Greta read well too. I wish I had been taught phonics. During the 50’s one of the educational trends in Arkansas was to focus on reading by sight. I don’t recall much teaching of phonics. Think heaven the pendulum has swung back toward more stress of phonics. I hope you enjoy reading. It’s a wonderful hobby.
Good reading ability is crucial in modern literate society. It has a fundamental role in how we acquire knowledge and has been associated with employment level and socioeconomic status. Twin studies are best to research when looking at whether something is innate. Here’s data from a study of 6,000 twins. There’s lots of studies concerning ready ability and genetics.
Children who are avid readers are typically good readers, and children who seldom read a book voluntarily often have dyslexia. Psychologists and behavioural geneticists from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, studied this in 6,000 7-year-old twin pairs. They discovered that how well children read influences how much they read, and not the other way around. Furthermore, they found that how well children read is very inheritable, while how much they read is influenced equally by genes and the environment.
The good readers all read a book for pleasure now and then, and almost half of them even daily. Only 1 out of 5 of the struggling readers read daily, and 1 out of 10 never read. It is known that how much you do something and how well you do it are related, but for reading this study seems to solve the chicken-and-egg problem. The study is published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry ‘Why do children read more? The influence of reading ability on voluntary reading practices’, Elsje van Bergen et al.
1 comment:
I love to read! Books and blogs...blogs are like short chapters in someones life! My Dad was a reader, my Mother was not...she didn't enjoy reading most likely because she didn't read easily. Therefore she never read to her children or encouraged them to read. I loved reading to the girls at bedtime and they are both good readers who love books. We had a library night once a week when they were younger and we lived in a town with a library, they used to be so excited with the newest books to read:)
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