Reading: A Psycholinguistic Approach

Abstract

The psycholinguistic model of reading is defined as the process of creating meaning with print. The brain uses three cueing systems to recognise words on the page during this meaning making process: phonological, semantics and syntactic. Readers use what is in their head (schemata) to make sense of what is on the page. During the process of reading, our eyes fixate on approximately 60% of words on the page (Paulson& Goodman, 2008). Of these fixated words, our eyes usually stop on only one or two letters. Since we can perceive only those things upon which our eyes fixate, it is clear, that our brain fills in the blanks to create meaning during reading. It is clear as well, that the eyes are directed by information in the cortex much more so than information on the page during the act of reading. In this work, the study of reading is analysed from the perspectives of psycholinguistics, linguistics and psychology. The study concludes that the problems associated with reading are partly psychological and appropriate steps were provided to solve these problems.