I skimmed an interview with the Director of the Stanford Educational Neuroscience Initiative, Bruce McCandliss, on how we learn to read (and why some struggle).
I admit, I wasn’t reading it as someone trying to teach a child to read, but rather as someone fascinated by how the written word changes our brain. Apparently, reading hijacks the brain’s commitment to perceptual expertise. Letters are a puzzle that we solve, and then, new worlds open to us.
Or as the interview presents it: the developing reader crosses a threshold and suddenly, “You’re in this mental space with someone (the author) that depends on the transparency of the words.”
My goal when I write fiction is that the words fade away and readers simply exist in an imagined world. It seems this is precisely the goal. I feel validated (even as I apologise sincerely for using that piece of jargon. Validated. Ugh).
Words are magic. Playing with them and making them sing is vital. But the magic is when that singing creates a world. The brain lights up!
Marketers are especially focused on when our brains light up.
This second neuroscience link I wanted to share with you is from the American Marketing Association, Inside the Consumer Brain: How Neuroscience Can Predict Ad Enjoyment by Ceylin Petek Ertekin and Elvira Tolen.
A key finding was that while emotion is a great hook…
The sustained predictiveness of social cognition signals suggests that when viewers connect with characters or scenarios meaningfully, they remain receptive to information for longer periods. In essence, our neural findings support what many creative advertisers intuitively understand: stories that foster social connection and meaning will likely lead to the best results, creating a receptive context where product information feels relevant rather than being intrusive.
We come back to last month’s theme of storytelling. People want to feel, and foster, their sense of belonging.
I’m coming to believe that our brains are storytellers and that we derive great satisfaction (and survive) when at an unconscious level those stories are shared. If our group inhabits the same (imaginary) world, then we’re more likely to act cohesively. In fact, it might be that the nature of our perceptual expertise is defined by the stories of our group. We value reading, and so, children are taught perceptual expertise regarding letters.
Perhaps the tension between “us” and “them” is always a matter of clashing stories; a fact obscured by the power differentials that send some stories underground.
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