Aprendizagem da leitura por adultos e alterações decorrentes na linguagem e na cognição.

Abstract

Reading is not a natural ability of the human being, our brain was not made for reading, but thanks to brain plasticity, we were able to learn to read (DEHAENE, 2012). Studies indicate that learning to read causes structural level effects, modifying the brain architecture by creating connections between the regions of auditory processing and the region of visual processing; and functional level, changing the way we process verbal language and the visual stimuli, such as letters (MORAIS, 1996; DEHAENE et al., 2010; SCLIAR-CABRAL, 2013; KOLINSKY, 2015; GABRIEL; MORAIS; KOLINSKY, 2016 ) Bergen and Lau (2012) explain that being a fluent reader/writer entails thousands of hours of experience with the eyes and the hands in the direction dictated by a writing system. This work aims to investigate changes in language and cognition resulting from learning to read in adulthood, focusing on visual and auditory processing. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it was not possible to perform the data collection planned for this study. Therefore, the work is limited to delineating the state of the art on the subject and to describe an experimental research plan for application with three groups of adults: illiterate, ex-illiterate and literate, who learned to read in childhood. The first instruments consist of tests to characterize the profile of the participants and to identify the reading level. Then, tests are presented to investigate the relationship between the reading level (obtained in previous tests) and linguistic awareness, as well as the relationship between the reading level and non-linguistic visual processing. Part of the tests analyzes eye behavior by predicting data capture using eye tracking equipment (Eye Tracking). Eye movements are between perception and cognition (RICHARDSON; DALE; SPIVEY, 2007), therefore, analyzing them during reading allows access to unconscious processes. We work with the hypothesis that the three groups present differences in visual processing (eye behavior) and auditory processing (phonological and morphological awareness). This master's thesis also comprises, in the Appendices section, 5 publications by the author, produced during the master's degree, in line with the present study.