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

Abstract

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.