Trying to read more? Your brain will thank you

Reading is good for you, but fiction has added benefits. So how does reading work in the brain? Why are stories so impactful? And why, in this era of book clubs and booktok, are literacy rates not thriving? Get your votes in https://www.abc.net.au/listen/radionational/countdown/top100books for Radio National's Top 100 Books Countdown before October 1st. Guests: Professor Genevieve McArthurAustralian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy, ACUDirector of Research Translation, Dyslexia SPELD Foundation Dr Lili YuSenior Lecturer, School of Psychological SciencesMacquarie University Centre for Reading Dr Raymond MarProfessor of PsychologyYork University J. A. (Jess) StevensAuthor, A Change of Pace https://www.jastevens.com.au/books BecJess' partner Credits: Presenter/producer: Sana QadarReporter/producer: Rose KerrSenior producer: James BullenSound engineer: Tim JenkinsResources: Reading Writing Hotline https://readingwritinghotline.edu.au/ 1300 6 555 06Literacy for Life Foundation https://www.lflf.org.au/Dyslexia SPELD foundation https://dsf.net.au/?srsltid=AU7gw4V_Vz_xkQcV5qyIHKTLxnVif7hbjFJI2BMHph7htu8kzku7u-slMore information: More than 1 in 3 Australian adults are functionally illiterate. How can we fix this? https://theconversation.com/more-than-1-in-3-australian-adults-are-functionally-illiterate-how-can-we-fix-this-277375The benefits of reading narrative fiction https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X26001065#bib39A chapter a day: Association of book reading with longevity https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953616303689?via%3DihubWhat Chinese can teach us about reading https://www.mq.edu.au/faculty-of-medicine-health-and-human-sciences/news/what-chinese-can-teach-us-about-the-psychology-of-readingToo many students have 'reading anxiety'. New research suggests it is triggered by problems in primary school https://theconversation.com/too-many-students-have-reading-anxiety-new-research-suggests-it-is-triggered-by-problems-in-primary-school-291052Reading and associations with brain health, cognition, well-being, and mental health https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/psychological-medicine/article/reading-and-associations-with-brain-health-cognition-wellbeing-and-mental-health/1A3565FA61831A975813113DE1AB2B09To explore more great episodes from the award-winning psychology podcast All in the Mind with host Sana Qadar, download the ABC Listen app (Australia) or search 'ABC All in the Mind podcast' wherever you get your podcasts. There you'll find more episodes on mental health, trauma, attachment theory, wellness hacks, and family relationships. You'll also hear interviews with experts like Esther Perel, Billy Garvey and Ethan Kross. All in the Mind is created for ABC's Radio National by specialist journalists and reporters at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Voting is open for ABC Radio National's Top 100 Australian Books Countdown.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  Go to abc.net.au/top100books and pick up to 10 of your favourites.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Choose from the inspiration list or add your own title.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Then in October, we will tally everyone's votes and countdown from 100 to number one on ABC Radio National and ABC Listen.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  You don't have long. Vote now at abc.net.au/top100books.

• 0:38Speaker 03

  You can use a book for so much. You can relieve someone's anxiety. You can, you can take someone out of their daily grind. You can make their life a little bit more joyful. Reading can be such a beautiful experience.

• 0:55Sana Qadar?

  Reading is no doubt powerful. It's also necessary. Road signs, emails, texts, all manner of boring paperwork. Reading is involved in pretty much every aspect of our lives. So how does reading work? How does our brain go from seeing shapes on a page to then turning them into words which then make us feel things?

• 1:17Speaker 05

  There's quite a bit of evidence that reading helps us to better understand other people.

• 1:22Speaker 06

  And I think we know that hope is a really powerful psychological tool.

• 1:26Sana Qadar?

  And despite the necessity of reading in modern life, how is it that almost half of Australian adults are functionally illiterate? Forty-four percent, according to one survey, which is astounding. I'm Sana Qadar and this is All in the Mind from ABC Radio National. Today, books and the brain and the unique benefits of reading fiction over non-fiction. And All in the Mind producer, Rose Kerr, is in the studio with me today. Hey, Rose.

• 1:55Speaker 07

  Hi, Sana.

• 1:56Sana Qadar?

  So, Rose, you've mentioned before that you're like a major fiction reader. Is that what inspired this episode for you?

• 2:02Speaker 07

  Yeah, look, I'm always trying to find an excuse to spend more money on books. But to be honest, what actually inspired the episode was noticing in my day-to-day life, all of a sudden, reading has become really cool. Like, I know lots of people in their twenties and thirties who are making their own little book clubs, they are following book talk influencers, like people who just talk about books, and they're even renewing their library cards.

• 2:29Sana Qadar?

  That's interesting because like, I didn't know very much about book talk until books from book talk started being turned into film and TV. So the first one was that Blake Lively film, The Name I'm Forgetting. You know, the one, Justin Baldoni, et cetera. And then also the shows recently of like Off Campus and Heated Rivalry. So yes, there's a lot of people very actively engaged in reading and talking about it online. But all of that's coming at the same time. Literacy rates have been falling. They've not been great for a while.

• 2:57Speaker 07

  Yeah. So that statistic you mentioned earlier, that 44% of Australian adults are functionally illiterate, that comes from a 2013 survey from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is from over a decade ago. So things may have shifted since then. But it's like, one of those statistics people tend to talk about when they look at this topic. It's also estimated that for Indigenous Australian adults, the rate of illiteracy is between 40 and 70%. And that comes from the Literacy for Life Foundation. And then in terms of 2026 data, we can look at NATPLAN results. So if you've not heard of these before, these are Australia's national standardised school tests. And

• 3:41Speaker 07

  the results from this year showed that one in three students are falling below basic proficiency levels for reading and writing.

• 3:48Sana Qadar?

  And we should clarify, what does functional literacy actually mean?

• 3:52Speaker 07

  Yeah, good idea. So functional literacy recognises that someone is able to read and write at a level where they can participate in society, you know, they can go to work, they can do the things that they need to do. So if you're functionally illiterate, your skills basically fall below that threshold. And often when we talk about functional literacy these days, it also refers to digital literacy skills as well.

• 4:16Sana Qadar?

  Right. And so do we have any idea why literacy rates are in so much trouble right now?

• 4:21Speaker 07

  There seems to be a few reasons.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  As you say, there are multiple interacting contributing factors to this.

• 4:30Speaker 07

  This is Professor Genevieve MacArthur. She works at the Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy.

• 4:37Speaker 03

  And I'm also the Director of Research Translation at the Dyslexia Spelled Foundation.

• 4:42Speaker 07

  Genevieve suspects some of the reasons behind these literacy rates include the way we teach reading to the accessibility of that education.

• 4:51Speaker 03

  Particularly in a country like Australia, which is really big.

• 4:54Speaker 07

  Plus, students may not always connect with what they're being asked to read.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  If you're in a remote region of Australia, you might not really care too much about a story about a kid who got lost in a supermarket in the city, you know. So you want to get the context right as well to engage the students in the reading and to see the point of learning to read.

• 5:14Speaker 07

  And in her own life, Genevieve has noticed changes in attitudes towards reading.

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Growing up in the seventies, you, you know, there'd be evenings where we would have our pyjamas on. We would have had dinner and my dad would say, right, we're going to the library. Like, okay, Dad.

• 5:31Speaker 07

  So, Sana, I think it's safe to say that reading is important.

• 5:35Sana Qadar?

  Yeah.

• 5:36Speaker 07

  But it's also really good for us. Like, if you want to look at it in a selfish way, it does have some awesome benefits. But before we can get into all of those, we need to understand how reading works. Are you ready for some neuroscience?

• 5:50Sana Qadar?

  Always.

• 5:52Speaker 07

  All right. So we're going to learn basically in a very broad way how reading works in the brain. The first thing our brains notice is what the word looks like. So the orthographic information of the word.

• 6:05Sana Qadar?

  So like the letters themselves?

• 6:06Speaker 07

  Yeah. So if you're reading English, it'll be letters. But other languages, you might better describe it as characters.

• 6:12Sana Qadar?

  Right, right.

• 6:12Speaker 07

  Then our brains attach the shape of the word to what it sounds like, which is called the phonological information.

• 6:19Sana Qadar?

  So like an O is 'oh' kind of thing?

• 6:22Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then we combine those two parts with the meaning of the word. So our brains like sticking them together like a puzzle.

• 6:30Sana Qadar?

  Okay, so it's what the word looks like, plus what the word sounds like, plus the meaning.

• 6:35Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 6:36Sana Qadar?

  That's the equation.

• 6:37Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly. And that is called lexical processing.

• 6:42Sana Qadar?

  Right, okay. And it's just a matter of like doing this over and over so you get sentences? Or how does it work for, you know, longer chunks of reading?

• 6:48Speaker 07

  Yeah, it's pretty much just that. But it does involve quite a lot of brain coordination to get your eyes and attention moving from word to word. Like, it is complicated. And at the same time, we've got multiple cognitive systems all working together. So our language and visual processing systems and our memory.

• 7:06Sana Qadar?

  Okay, right. So that's like a lot going on. Is this the same process, whatever language you're talking about?

• 7:12Speaker 07

  Yes and no. So to answer that question, you first have to recognise that reading is an invented skill.

• 7:19Speaker 03

  If you think about the writing really only invented from like 5,000 years ago?

• 7:25Speaker 07

  This is Dr Lily Yu. She's a senior lecturer in the School of Psychological Sciences at Macquarie University. Her research aims to understand how people read and how different writing systems impact that process.

• 7:39Speaker 03

  So what that actually means is that when we read, the process of reading essentially rely on the cognitive components or the process that humans have already developed for other tasks.

• 7:54Speaker 07

  Stuff like our attention and memory systems. So regardless of the language we're reading, we broadly rely on those same cognitive processes. But there are some differences.

• 8:06Speaker 03

  The best example I can give is comparing Chinese with English. If you encounter any sort of a Chinese text, you are probably aware that, you know, each of those Chinese characters, the book shape square like script, each of those Chinese characters is actually visually very dense. So those kind of very dense facial complexity actually has a role in Chinese reading that's not typically observed in English or other alphabetic language reading.

• 8:37Speaker 07

  Lily and her team observed how this impacts reading through an eye-tracking study where participants were asked to read text in their first language.

• 8:46Speaker 03

  So we have native Chinese speaker reading the native Chinese text, English speaker reading English text, and Finnish speaker through the Finnish text. And obviously, of course, three different kind of test, the semantic information or the content are equivalent across all three of those different tests.

• 9:06Speaker 07

  They found that overall comprehension of the text was more or less the same. However...

• 9:12Speaker 03

  The way they actually process that text and information is very different. So the finding associated with that particular study is that with Chinese, because of that very high level of the visual density at the front end, so the patterns eyes actually appear to be like people spent longer time reading each word, but make fewer fixations overall on the sentences.

• 9:37Speaker 07

  So depending on the language you're reading, your brain might be doing slightly different work to understand the text. But overall, because reading is an invented skill, it's going to use those same cognitive processes.

• 9:57Speaker 07

  Now we know how reading works, we can get into its benefits. With all these cognitive processes going on, it's no big surprise that reading is good for the brain. For example, it can increase your vocabulary.

• 10:11Speaker 03

  That's not even only reading per se. So even if you're only able to listen to audiobooks or like podcasts like this, the way that we organise the words in our head becomes more sophisticated, that we kind of know more of the nuances between different words.

• 10:29Speaker 07

  It can also improve our memory.

• 10:31Speaker 03

  That kind of wider or stronger networking of the semantic knowledge. It actually helped with our memory, both the working memory, but also the long-term memory.

• 10:42Speaker 07

  It's also thought that reading can be an escape or a way to relax. There's also a bunch of good stuff we can get from reading fiction specifically.

• 10:52Speaker 05

  We know that reading in general was going to be a boon to our vocabulary and our language abilities, but it's fiction that actually has a unique benefit. So fiction is a much stronger predictor of verbal abilities than non-fiction.

• 11:08Speaker 07

  This is Raymond Ma, a professor of psychology from York University in Toronto.

• 11:13Speaker 05

  You know, so this is an area that I think there's insufficient amounts of research. I really wish more people were looking at this specific topic, but this research that is out there is very consistent in finding this effect, that, you know, fiction has this unique benefit. And we know that language abilities are a great predictor of things like educational achievement and then later on, career achievement and success and SES and that kind of thing. So, you know, given that we all recognise how important our verbal abilities are, I think that it's really interesting that fiction is the one that seems to have the stronger influence.

• 11:47Speaker 07

  Plus, reading relates to social connection.

• 11:50Speaker 05

  In part, you know, reading can actually be a social practice. And so a lot of people, including a lot of older adults, belong to book clubs. So getting together to discuss different perspectives on a novel that everyone read is a great way to spend time and a great way to bond with others.

• 12:07Speaker 07

  And Raymond says reading books might even help us live longer.

• 12:12Speaker 05

  There's been a couple of really large studies, one in America and one in Finland, and they looked at older adults and they found that those that read more actually lived longer. And it wasn't a small effect. It was quite a large and substantial finding. And, you know, it's fascinating because we think of reading as a sedentary activity, right? And so not necessarily something that you would associate with physical health, but we don't know exactly why it is. We know that you don't see similar effects for reading magazines, for example, or newspapers. The effect was larger for reading books.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  And there's one sort of hint at why this might be, and that was one study that was done in America, where it looked like there was something along the lines of cognitive engagement or, you know, sort of preserved mental capacity that perhaps explained this greater longevity. And so there's a sort of related work demonstrating that those who read experience a slower cognitive decline associated with aging. So, you know, it makes sense. Reading is cognitively demanding as a process and also in the fact that it exposes us to all kinds of different ideas and perspectives and experiences.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  And it seems like that helps to keep our mind active and might even help us to live longer.

• 13:43Speaker 07

  With all these benefits of reading, it makes you wonder, what about if you struggle with reading? How does that impact your life? Because children seem to be little comparison machines, it does not take them very long for them to work out who finds it easy to read and who doesn't find it easy to read. Here's Professor Genevieve MacArthur again. So those students who are really struggling compared to their friends in the classroom, some of them will start saying to themselves, what's wrong with me? I am not a good reader. There's something wrong with me. I am a bad reader. Now, that statement unto itself represents something we call reading self-concept. So these students, they're actually struggling with their ability to learn to read and then they end up with poor reading self-concept.

• 14:26Speaker 07

  Then, as many of us will be familiar with, students can find themselves in a situation where they're asked to read in front of the class. Now, it's very natural. For example, if you're not good at something and you are asked to do it publicly, it becomes very anxiety provoking because you don't want to look foolish in front of other people. You don't want the negative feedback. And so this poor self-concept can trigger anxieties around reading. And so then you start disengaging from reading, which means you are not getting as much reading practice, which means that you fall even behind in your actual reading ability.

• 15:09Speaker 07

  And so this vicious cycle forms between struggling to learn to read and the awareness that you're struggling to learn to read and this anxiety and the disengagement. And so that is, at this point in time, what the science is suggesting is happening. As Genevieve says, this is what the current research suggests, but it is still a working hypothesis. If you want more information on reading difficulties like dyslexia, check out the links in our show notes.

• 15:44Sana Qadar?

  From ABC Radio National, this is All in the Mind. I'm Sana Akhadar. Today, the facts about fiction with producer Rose Kerr. Rose, we've heard about how reading impacts the brain and our cognition, but aside from those kinds of benefits, there's like a real emotional benefit to reading too, isn't there?

• 16:01Speaker 07

  Yeah, and I think anyone who's read a book that has made them laugh or maybe even shed a tear can relate to the idea that reading does make us feel strongly towards the characters in the book, like for good or for bad.

• 16:17Speaker 07

  And to explore this idea a bit further, I spoke to an author, J.A. Stephens, also known as Jess, whose debut novel explores a bunch of perspectives we don't often hear from.

• 16:29Speaker 07

  If you could tell me who you are and what you do, like however you'd like to introduce yourself in the episode.

• 16:36Speaker 03

  All right then. Well, first of all, I'd say I am very, very autistic. I've got ADHD. I am very much into true crime. I am a Christmas tragic. I am an appalling public speaker. And probably then, after all that, if there's anything left, I'm a wannabe author.

• 16:59Speaker 07

  Oh, I love that so much. That's beautiful. Could you describe the book to anyone who's never picked it up? How would you describe it?

• 17:08Speaker 03

  A Change of Pace is a queer and disability normative regency romance with a bit of adventure, suspense and spice. And it's just a bit of everything for everyone.

• 17:20Speaker 07

  The book was inspired by not seeing many stories that represented her loved ones.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  Basically, I was watching a TV series called Gentleman Jack with my partner, and that was a beautiful, fun queer story based on a true character from history. Don't want to give too many spoilers away, but it was, it sort of did have a happy ever after, but it was still a bit of a closeted love story. So at the end, you know, the two female characters had to keep their romance and their love story secret from others. And it was set in sort of the regency period. And I guess I can only describe what followed was one of my more sort of impassioned spiel about oppression and the, and the sort of significant and enduring injustices in the

• 18:08Speaker 03

  world that was sort of caused by prejudice and discrimination, sort of both historically and now. And how utterly unfair it is that both my trans partner Beck and my daughter Lily, who has Down syndrome, can't just pick up a book and readily see themselves reflected in it positively without some sort of trope or, or catch or, you know, be maligned in some way. I sort of realised that I needed to change that. And, and if it helped others along the way, then, you know, so be it.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  I think it's really healthy to be reminded that ours isn't the only perspective out there. And I think reading and reading broadly helps us to do that. We tend to surround ourselves with like minded people. And that's not a criticism. It's just human nature because it's super comfortable to do that. People are often intimidated by and sometimes even scared of things that they don't understand or have no experience with. And this makes it easier for politicians and the like

• 19:26Speaker 03

  to use those kinds of fears or mistrust to further divide us. So reading can be a really gentle or non confrontational way to sort of bridge that gap.

• 19:40Speaker 05

  There's quite a bit of evidence that reading helps us to better understand other people. And I think that makes sense because that's what fiction is. It's portrayals and representations of other people, their thoughts, their experiences, their emotions.

• 19:56Speaker 07

  Professor Raymond Marr describes the connection between reading fiction and empathy as a bidirectional relationship.

• 20:02Speaker 05

  We know that reading fiction can help to hone the same sort of mental processes that we use to understand other people, including empathy and perspective taking. We also know that it's possible that stories contain like concrete social knowledge about the world that we can learn and then apply to the real world. So there's these two different ways in which stories can help us become better at navigating the complex social world in which we live in. But it's also true that the better our empathy, the better our perspective taking, the easier it is for us to understand stories. And so I do think that it's this bidirectional relationship whereby stories help to foster empathy.

• 20:45Speaker 05

  The better you are at empathy, the easier it is to understand stories. And there could be this kind of like upward spiral or positive feedback loop where reading increases empathy, empathy makes reading easier, makes us to read more and then helps us to grow our empathy and so forth.

• 21:03Speaker 07

  Raymond says there are challenges that come with this kind of research. For example, the effects of reading fiction only really emerge after prolonged and frequent exposure.

• 21:13Speaker 05

  It's also something that we do voluntarily and in our own free time. You know, it's not something that we can really take people and force them just to read one thing and nothing else for months on end. You know, that's terribly difficult. But we have come up with a bunch of clever ways to look at this. In terms of the neuroscience, what we find is that the parts of the brain that become active while we're reading narrative fiction are the same parts of the brain that are activated when we're trying to understand other people. And so that's consistent with this idea that while reading stories, we're using the same kind of mental processes that we would use to understand others. I think when I started, it was really quite a small area.

• 21:58Speaker 05

  And in fact, one of my supervisors in graduate school told me that he was really worried that I wouldn't get a job, you know, because of this obscure topic that I was studying. Luckily, I did get a job. And honestly, the area has just exploded. And so I would say within the last five, 10 years, there's just been an enormous amount of fascinating work on this topic. And so at this point, I would say we know quite a bit from a lot of different fields of psychology. And so that's been really encouraging.

• 22:31Speaker 07

  The effects of reading can be seen amongst children and adults, but sometimes in different ways.

• 22:36Speaker 05

  So there have been studies with very young children around the age of four. And what's interesting about this developmental stage is that early on, you know, before the age of four, around the age of three or so, children actually don't understand that other people have minds. They don't understand that other people have thoughts and feelings that can differ from their own. And then they develop this ability, you know, around four and six years of age. And what we find is that children that are exposed to more storybooks, they're actually further along in this developmental process compared to others of the same age.

• 23:14Speaker 07

  It also plays an important role for teenagers working through new life experiences.

• 23:19Speaker 05

  There have been studies that have interviewed adolescents and they talk about how books have really helped them to sort of reflect on their emotions and gain greater insight into some of the challenging parts of their life.

• 23:31Speaker 07

  And regardless of your age, as we've said, stories introduce us to other perspectives.

• 23:37Speaker 05

  We don't really have access to the interior lives of others except through things like fiction.

• 23:45Speaker 07

  You can also experience these effects from other types of media, like movies or audiobooks.

• 23:50Speaker 05

  I think that as long as what we have is a representation of other people, their experiences, their interior life, that we would see kind of similar results, similar benefits. It's the content that really matters so much more than the modality. And so I don't think people should feel guilty at all for listening to audiobooks, for example.

• 24:11Speaker 07

  Ah, yes, the debate about audiobooks. While researching this episode and in conversations with other readers, there's this incredibly hotly debated topic of whether or not listening to audiobooks counts as reading. So I asked Raymond if listening to your novel still comes with benefits.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  I mean, I do think all are good. I don't think that they're the same. They're only marginally different. You really are getting like almost entirely the same content. You might interact with that content a little bit differently. And that when you're reading a book, you can maybe take a little bit more time. You can linger, you might actually go back and reread a paragraph or a sentence. If you come across a word that you don't understand, you might stop and look it up in the dictionary. You aren't likely to do those things while listening to the audiobook. But I do think that you're getting, you know, most of the content and mostly the same way while listening to the audiobook. And so it's certainly nothing to be ashamed of. And I think they serve different purposes, right?

• 25:15Speaker 05

  Like you cannot read a book while you empty the dishwasher. It's going to be a mess and you're going to break something. So, you know, each of these things has their purpose and has their benefits.

• 25:31Speaker 07

  How did you feel reading the book?

• 25:33Speaker 06

  I should say, which time? I've read so many versions of it. And I've loved them all.

• 25:38Speaker 07

  This is Bec, Jess's fiance and partner of 10 years.

• 25:42Speaker 06

  I was just so proud of Jess for creating this amazing inclusive world from her imagination and from her desire to create somewhere where I could see myself and where Lily could see herself in a story that was positive and represented trans women as being able to be strong and successful and just sort of everyday members of that society. So powerful, you know, so that's so wonderful. And I know it would be similarly wonderful for other trans women out there because for many of us, we do just want to see ourselves represented as we are, which is just individuals being ourselves and wanting to live sort of ordinary lives in our society today. I think one of the things that fiction does really well

• 26:27Speaker 06

  is that it can model alternatives. And what Jess's book does is give you a beacon of hope. And I think we know that hope is a really powerful psychological tool.

• 26:38Speaker 03

  You can use a book for so much. You can relieve someone's anxiety. You can take someone out of their daily grind. You can relieve their mental load. You can make their life a little bit more joyful. Reading can be such a beautiful experience. You can make people cry. You can connect them with the past. You can bring them nostalgia. You can bring them joy. You can bring all sorts of things. You can provide them with romance and passion and all the feelings. But you can also create hate. And as an author, you can do a whole lot. And I like to think that through writing this book,

• 27:22Speaker 03

  my intent was pure. It was written for my partner and my daughter, but I wanted it to get into the hands of people who needed it, who needed to feel that warmth and love and at home and wanted to feel safe. And yeah, that's really all I can say about it.

• 27:50Speaker 07

  That is author J.A. Stephens and her fiance Bec. You also heard from Professor Raymond Marr from York University in Toronto. Thanks also to Dr. Lily Yu from Macquarie University and Professor Genevieve MacArthur from the Australian Centre for the Advancement of Literacy and the Dyslexia Spelled Foundation. This episode was reported by science producer Rose Kerr. Thanks, Rose. Thanks, Sana. Thanks also to senior producer James Bullen and sound engineer Tim Jenkins.

• 28:21Speaker 07

  Before I go, if you are passionate about reading, make sure you have your say in Radio National's annual Top 100 Books Countdown. This year, we are celebrating Australian writing in all its many forms. So head to the Radio National website to cast your vote and just make sure you do that before the first of October because that is the deadline. We'll also pop a link to it in our show notes. That is it for All in the Mind this week. I'm Sana Qadar. Thanks for listening. I'll catch you next time.

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