READING AS A COGNITIVE

PROCESS

Lets begin by picturing a child

reading a book silently to herself.
She's just sitting there, fairly
motionless, staring at a book.
Occasionally, she turns a page.
Sometimes she laughs quietly to
herself for no apparent reason. .
It is a serene and beautiful
picture, but only because we
know that inside her head, she is
exploring a story and listening to
the author tell a tale through a
voice that only she can hear. If
she was sitting motionless,
occasionally laughing to herself
while staring intently at a potted
plant, it would be somewhat

No matter what approach,

method, and techniques
ever used in reading
instruction, educators agree
on two things :
1st Comprehension or
understanding is the major
objective of all reading
instruction.
2nd reading instruction must
be differentiated- that is, no
one method is suitable for all

Edmund B. Huey (1913)

said that when reading
was done for the
attainment of the readers
purpose, it became
excellent practice in the
higher thought processes.
The grasp of facts to
determine their values
and the choosing of those
facts and values that are
relevant to both a
readers purpose and an
authors intent requires a
mental discipline that is

READING IS A MENTAL PROCESS

- A dynamic, active way of
performing and it can be taught that
way. It is a mental process in the
sense that it is of the mind, that is
Cognitive.

Arthur Gates 1949 gave an account of the

reading process.
Reading is not a simple mechanical skill; nor is it
narrow scholastic
tool. Properly cultivated, it is essentially a
thoughtful process.
However, to say that reading is a thought-getting
process is to give
It too restricted a description. It should be
developed as a complex
organization of patterns of higher mental
processes.
It can and it should embrace all types of thinking,
evaluating, judging, imagining, reasoning, and
problem solving. Indeed, it is believed that reading

According to Horn (1937) reading

includes those processes that are
involved in approaching, perfecting,
and maintaining meaning through the
use of the printed page. Horn
recognizes the varieties and gradations
of reading and of purposes for reading,
methods for understanding, and
organizing knowledge in order to be
functional.

The author, moreover, does not

really convey ideas to the
reader; he merely stimulates
him to construct them out of
his own experience. If the
concept is already in the
readers mind, the task is
relatively easy, but if, as is
usually the case in school, it is
new to the reader, its
construction more nearly
approaches problem solving
than simple association.
Moreover, any error, bias , or
inadequacy in the authors
statement is almost certain to

In his book How We

Think, John
Dewey
(1969)
analyzed
reflective experiences, a
very cognitive process,
and declare that thought
may be directed by five
steps: 1) a felt difficulty;
2)
its
location
and
definition; 3) suggestion
of possible solution ; 4)
development
by
reasoning of the bearings
of the suggestion; 5)
further observation and
experiment leading to its

In the same work published

later, Dewey (1969) listed the
five phases of reflective
thought or cognitive process as
follows: 1) suggestions, in
which the mind leaps forward
to a possible solution; 2) an
intellectualization of the
difficulty or perplexity that has
been felt into a problem to be
solved, a question for which
the answer must be sought; 3)
the use of one suggestion after
another as a leading idea, or
hypothesis; to initiate and
guide observation and other
operations in collection of
factual material; 4) the mental

David H. Russell list six steps

that may occur in the thinking or
cognitive process.
1. The childs environment
stimulates mental activity.
2. The orientation or initial
direction of the thinking is
established.
3. the search for related
materials takes place.
4. there is a patterning of
various ideas into same
hypothesis or tentative
conclusion.
5. the deliberative, or critical ,
part of the thinking process is
developed.
6. the concluding stage of the
thinking process takes place
when the hypothesis selected