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13 - Characteristics of Illiterate and Literate Cognitive Processing: Implications of Brain–Behavior Co-Constructivism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2009

By
Karl Magnus Petersson  and
Alexandra Reis
Edited by
Paul B. Baltes ,
Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz  and
Frank Rösler
Karl Magnus Petersson
Affiliation:
Postdoctoral Fellow, F. C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands
Alexandra Reis
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Biological and Behavioral Psychology, Neuropsychology, and Cognitive Psychology University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal
Paul B. Baltes
Affiliation:
Max-Planck-Institut für Bildungsforschung, Berlin
Patricia A. Reuter-Lorenz
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Frank Rösler
Affiliation:
Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
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Summary

ABSTRACT

Literacy and education represent essential aspects of contemporary society, and subserve important aspects of socialization and cultural transmission. The study of illiterate subjects represents one approach to investigating the interactions between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development, individual learning, and their influence on the functional organization of the brain. In this chapter, we review some recent cognitive, neuroanatomic, and functional neuroimaging results indicating that formal education influences important aspects of the human brain. Taken together, this provides strong support for the idea that the brain is modulated by literacy and formal education, which in turn change the brain's capacity to interact with its environment, including the individual's contemporary culture. In other words, the individual is able to participate in, interact with, and actively contribute to the process of cultural transmission in new ways through acquired cognitive skills.

INTRODUCTION

Education plays an essential role in contemporary society. Acquiring reading and writing skills, as well as other cognitive skills, during formal education can be viewed as a structured process of cultural transmission. Formal education and the educational system represent essential aspects of modern society and are cardinal structures of the intelligent information environment. These institutionalized structures subserve important aspects of socialization and cultural transmission. The study of illiterate subjects and matched literate controls provides an opportunity to investigate the interaction between neurobiological and cultural factors in cognitive development and learning.

Type
Chapter
Information
Lifespan Development and the Brain
The Perspective of Biocultural Co-Constructivism
 , pp. 279 - 305
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2006

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