ABSTRACT
This chapter applies research in entrainment (the synchronization of biorhythms to the environment, across individuals, or between mother and infant) to the shared reading of children’s literature. Rhythms of poetic children’s books are compared to oscillatory brain wave bands in the neocortex, with effects similar to therapeutic oscillatory treatments. The reduction of norepinephrine and the increases in beta endorphin, serotonin, and melatonin make interactive book reading self-rewarding. Elevated levels of oxytocin affect phonetic processing (for both mother and infant) and have long-term effects for the child (especially in bonding and in aligning with social in-groups). Entrainment is yet another ancient brain mechanism pressed into linguistic service to compensate for the narrow bandwidth of human speech, making the listener mirror and anticipate the speaker’s thoughts and thus associating implied information that is not necessarily part of the linguistic information. Reading books to young children therefore has significant long-term implications for the child’s speech processing and social construction. The benefits of interactive book reading do not accrue from electronic devices, however, casting some doubt on the efficacy of digital children’s literature at least for very young children.
