ABSTRACT
Throughout the last century, contributions from psychology and education have laid a foundation for more recent contributions from psycholinguistics and neuroscience. In this age of shared technology, an increased understanding of the process of reading has occurred through the polygamous marriage of the traditional disciplines of pedagogy, psychology, linguistics, physiology, and neurology. This chapter presents a brief overview of these sources and defines the reading process as viewed from various perspectives. About the turn of the century, reading methodology shifted from a focus on skill instruction to the development of the understanding of the cognitive processes which take place while reading. The impetus originated from the research of Emile Javal, a Frenchman, who published 25 articles on topics of vision, speech, and writing. Huey's pedagogy was instrumental in providing the theory from which the reforms of the 1920s and 1930s evolved. Edward C. Tolman was a behaviorist who reoriented traditional conditioning theory to include human reasoning.
