Research by Kate Nation featured in a new report on the impact of reading
‘More than words: the real-life impact of reading’ concludes that reading equips children and young people with the vocabulary and knowledge to recognise and express their emotions, helping them to make sense of their own experiences and understand those of their peers. Through stories and emotive non-fiction, children are able to ‘build a rich foundation of social and emotional understanding that extends far beyond the pages of a book’.
The report features research by Professor Kate Nation, Maggie Snowling Tutorial Fellow in Psychology at St John’s, and her research group in the Department of Psychology. Kate’s research has shown that books expose children to a range of vocabulary and complex syntactic structures that they are unlikely to encounter in everyday conversation. This ‘book language’ tends, as Kate explains in the recent OUP report, ‘to be more emotionally nuanced and varied than the words we use in conversations’. Whereas speakers can convey emotional nuance through tone of voice and facial expression, writers need to employ ‘a range of words to capture the same feeling’. For this reason, Kate argues, ‘words like growl, grimace, frown, and scowl feature in children’s books, but less so in child-directed speech. Writers don’t just use ‘said’; instead, we see words like whisper, whimper, screech, howl, holler, whoop, and yell.’
" Reading provides opportunities for children to access this nuanced language and from that, construct thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about characters and situations, and perhaps about themselves too. " Professor Kate Nation
OUP’s survey of around 3,000 children aged 7-14 and 200 teachers across the UK supports these findings. 70% of children interviewed by OUP said that reading helps them understand why people feel or act the way they do, with a further 68% of children saying that reading helps them think about how they behave and treat other people. Over 90% of teachers agreed, citing empathy and perspective-taking as key benefits of reading.
The findings of OUP’s report are powerful, especially in the context of the National Year of Reading initiative for 2026. Whilst reading enjoyment and daily reading among children may have fallen to their lowest levels in over 20 years, young readers nonetheless recognise its value in encouraging deep thinking, emotional intelligence, and critical engagement. It is all the more urgent, then, that we support more children to learn to read and to find books that they can enjoy.
Professor Kate Nation discussed 'book language' and the challenges of becoming a reader in her 2026 Founder's Lecture at St John's. The lecture is available to watch here: