What are the implications of the way we read today?

我们今天阅读方式的含义是什么？

Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifier for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older kids don't read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on tablets or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknown to most of us, an invisible, game-changing transformation links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain's ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing and this has implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.

当你下次乘飞机时环顾四周。iPad成为了婴幼儿新的安抚物。年龄较小的学龄儿童在智能手机上读故事;年龄大点的孩子完全不阅读，而是弓身沉迷于电子游戏。父母和其他乘客则在平板电脑上阅读或者浏览大量的电子邮件和新闻推送。我们大多数人都不知道的是，一场无形的、改变游戏规则的变革将以上场景中的每个人都联系了起来:构建人脑阅读能力的神经元回路正在微妙且快速的改变，这对每一个人都产生影响，无论是读前的婴幼儿还是内行的成人。

As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacy necessitated a new circuit in our species' brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple mechanism for decoding basic information, like the number of goats in one's herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and affective processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research surfacing in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential 'deep reading' processes may be under threat as we move into digital-based modes of reading.

正如神经科学研究表明，6000多年前，习得读写能力必需要人类大脑有一个新的回路。该回路从一种用于解码基本信息的简单机制发展而来，如羊群中的山羊数量，再到当前这种高度复杂的阅读型大脑。我的研究描绘了当前的阅读脑如何促进人类一些最重要的智力和情感进程的发展，包括内化的知识、类比逻辑和推断、观点采择与同理心、批判性分析以及洞察力的形成。现今出现在世界许多地方的研究警醒人们，当我们进入数字化的阅读模式时，以上这些核心“深度阅读“过程都可能会被威胁。

This is not a simple, binary issue of print versus digital reading and technological innovation. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do not err as a society when we innovate but when we ignore what we disrupt or diminish while innovating. In this hinge moment between print and digital cultures, society needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert reading circuit, what our children and older students are not developing, and what we can do about it.

这并不是个将印刷与数字化阅读及技术创新相比较的简单二元问题。正如麻省理工学院的学者SherryTurkle所写的那样，我们的社会并不会在我们创新时出错，但当我们在创新过程中忽略了被我们破坏和减少的东西时才会出错。在当前这个印刷文化和数字文化交融的转折期，社会需要正视那些专业阅读回路中正在减少的部分，我们的孩子和年长一些的学生没能发展的部分，以及我们能为此做些什么。

We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint like vision or language; it needs an environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment's requirements – from different writing systems to the characteristics of whatever medium is used. If the dominant medium advantages processes that are fast, multi-task oriented and well-suited for large volumes of information, like the current digital medium, so will the reading circuit. As UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocated to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes.

从研究中我们得知，与视觉和语言不同，大脑中的阅读回路并不能通过遗传基因蓝图赋予人类，它需环境来发展。此外，阅读回路会适应特定环境的要求--从不同的书写系统到使用的媒介特点。如果主流媒介能有利于快速，多重任务导向，以及适应大量信息的进程，如当前的数字媒介，那么大脑的阅读回路也能。正如UCLA心理学家Patricia Greenfield 所写的那样，结果是越来越少的注意力与时间将被分配给速度较慢，但需要大最时间的深度阅读过程。

Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries in favour of something simpler as they no longer have the patience to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students' 'cognitive impatience', however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to comprehend the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts.

越来越多来自于教育工作者及心理学和人类学研究者的报告证实了这一点。英国文学学者和教师MarkEdmudson描述了很多大学生主动避开阅读19世纪和20世纪的古典文学，他们更喜欢简单些的作品，因为他们不再有耐心阅读更长、更密集、更晦涩难懂的文字。但是，我们不用过多担心学生的认知急躁"，夏更应该思考这个现象的潜在问题:大量学生没有能力在阅读中进行一定程度的批判性分析来理解要求更高的文本中所体现的复杂思想和争论。

Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of troubling downstream effects on reading comprehension in older high school and college students. In Stavanger, Norway, psychologist Anne Mangen and her colleagues studied how high school students comprehend the same material in different mediums. Mangen's group asked subjects questions about a short story whose plot had universal student appeal; half of the students read the story on a tablet, the other half in paperback. Results indicated that students who read on print were superior in their comprehension to screen-reading peers, particularly in their ability to sequence detail and reconstruct the plot in chronological order.

多项研究表明，数字屏幕的使用可能会在年龄较大的高中生与大学生的阅读理解方面产生各种令人担忧的“下游效应"。在挪威的斯塔万格，心理学家Anne Mangen和她的同事们研究高中生如何在不同的媒介理理解相同的材料。Mangen的小组就一段短篇故事向实验对象提问，该故事的情节吸引着广大学生。一半的学生在平板电脑上阅读该故事，另-半的学生阅读纸质版的书。结果表明，阅读纸质版的学生在理解方面优于对着屏幕阅读的学生，特别是在细节排序和按照时间顺序复述故事情节的能力方面。

Ziming Liu from San Jose State University has conducted a series of studies which indicate that the 'new norm' in reading is skimming, involving word-spotting and browsing through the text. Many readers now use a pattern when reading in which they sample the first line and then word-spot through the rest of the text. When the reading brain skims like this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other words, we don't have time to grasp complexity, to understand another's feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader's own.

圣何塞州立大学的Ziming Liy进行了一系列的研究，研究表明阅读中的“新模式“是略读，包括识别词汇以及浏览文本。现在，许多读者在阅读时使用这样的模式:他们会挑第一句话进行试读，然后对其余文本进行关键词扫读。当大脑像这样略读时它减少了分配给深度阅读程序的时间。换而言之我们没有时间去领悟复杂性，去理解别人的感受欣赏美，以及建立读者自己的看法。

The possibility that critical analysis, empathy and other deep reading processes could become the unintended 'collateral damage' of our digital culture is not a straightforward binary issue about print versus digital reading. It is about how we all have begun to read on various mediums and how that changes not only what we read, but also the purposes for which we read. Nor is it only about the young. The subtle atrophy of critical analysis and empathy affects us all equally. It affects our ability to navigate a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a retreat to the most familiar stores of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and irrational ideas.

批判性分析，共情和其他深度阅读过程可能会承受数字文化无意间的“附带损害”。 这并不是一个关乎印刷阅读与数字阅读的简单二元问题。它关系到的是我们所有人是如何开始在各个媒介阅读，以及如何改变了我们的阅读内容和阅读目的。这也不仅仅是关于年轻人的。批判性分析与共情的悄然削弱同样影响我们所有人。它影响着我们在持续的信息轰炸中找到正确方法来获取信息的能力。它刺激人们退回到未经审核的最熟悉的信息库中，这些信息不需要也没经过任何分析，使我们易受虚假信息及不合理观点的影响。

There's an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice. The story of the changing reading brain is hardly finished. We possess both the science and the technology to identify and redress the changes in how we read before they become entrenched. If we work to understand exactly what we will lose, alongside the extraordinary new capacities that the digital world has brought us, there is as much reason for excitement as caution.

在神经科学界有条古老的规则并没有随时代变化用进废退。当将此应用于阅读大脑中的批判思维时，它是一条给人希望的原则，因为它预示着选择。关于不断变化的阅读大脑的故事还没有结束，我们拥有科学和技术能够在这种阅读方法固化之前进行识别和矫正。如果我们要去准确理解将要失去哪些，以及数字世界给我们带来的非凡新能力，那么我们就有很多的理由保持谨慎和兴奋。