A History of Research on Reading. Theoretical Paper No. 56.

The systematic study of reading dates form the beginnings of experimental psychology in the late nineteenth century. Cattell measured reaction times for naming letters and words, investigated parallel processing, and compared legibilities of letters and printing types. From the end of the 1880s to the publication of Huey's 1908 text, reading processes were a central focus of experimental psychology. After this period, however, the influence of behaviorism turned experimental psychologists away from the investigation of mental processes, while educational psychologists became preoccupied with testing and measurement. A revival of experimental work occurred in the late 1950s. With the current rise in popularity of information processing, studies of reading once again occupy a central role in psychology. Almost all of the problems attended to by the first researchers remain unresolved today: control of eye movements, the strategies involved in word recognition, the amount and types of overlapping processes, the role of subvocalization, the nature of the eye-voice span and the optimal methods for reading instruction. How to translate research results into educational practice also still remains a problem. (Author/MKM)