Reading fiction has unique benefits for language and empathy - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Reading fiction doesn't just take you into another world, it also benefits your connection to the real world. (Getty Images: Westend61)

For author Melanie Saward, stories are so much more than words.

"I think it's a safe way of confronting the parts of ourselves that we don't often like and that we need to sit with in order to grow," she says.

Dr Saward is a Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman, academic and publishing all-rounder, who writes across multiple genres including Aboriginal romance novels.

She recognises the power of fiction to unpack biases.

"We all have these biases — I have things that I have to unpack that make me really, really uncomfortable — it's just because of society and how you're raised, your standpoint, and all those things that make you, you.

"Fiction is such a powerful way of privately confronting you with those things."

Melanie Saward's novels include Burn (2023) and Love Unleashed (2024). (Supplied: Jill Kerswill Photography)

Studies show reading can increase empathy as we experience new perspectives and is linked with better brain health, cognition and mental wellbeing.

It is associated with a lower risk of dementia and slower cognitive decline in adults, and better attention, memory, executive function, academic achievement and mental health in children and adolescents.

Reading is an invented skill, according to Lili Yu, senior lecturer of psychological sciences at Macquarie University who studies how people read.

Dr Yu says reading uses parts of the brain, such as our attention and memory systems, we used for other purposes prior to the invention of the skill.

"Because reading is kind of a recent invention, that essentially means the processes involved in reading rely on lots of the cognitive systems we have already," she says.

Put simply, when we encounter written text, the first thing our brain observes is the shape, or the "orthographic information", of the word.

We attach that visual information to what the word sounds like, known as the "phonological information".

Then we take those two different forms of information and mentally attach it to the meaning of the word. This is called lexical processing, Dr Yu explains.

Although this is the most common way to read, some people do this process slightly differently.

"Sometimes people see the form and go straight to the meaning, a tendency more commonly seen in logographic scripts like Chinese," she says.

While reading, we're using the same mental processes we would normally use to understand others, says Professor Mar. (Pexels: nam mau)

Reading sentences is more complicated, requiring multiple cognitive systems to work together, including our memory, language and visual processing systems.

Dr Lili Yu says reading can strengthen our memory. It also increases our vocabulary and allows us to better understand nuances between words, she tells All In The Mind.

"The way we organise the words in our head becomes more sophisticated, and we know more of the nuances between different words."

Reading narrative fiction comes with its own unique benefits, Raymond Mar, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, adds.

"Fiction is a much stronger predictor of verbal abilities than non-fiction," he says.

"We know that language abilities are a great predictor of things like educational achievement and then later on, career achievement and success.

"So, given that we all recognise how important our verbal abilities are, I think it's really interesting that fiction is the one that seems to have the stronger influence."

Despite the benefits of reading for developing language, Australians are reading less than ever before and literacy levels in many OECD countries are declining or stagnating.

Beyond developing literacy, reading introduces us to different perspectives.

Professor Mar says there are two ways stories help us become better at navigating the world we live in.

"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."

This effect has been observed in brain studies.

"What we find is 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."

Reading can help foster social connections. (Pexels: cottonbro studio)

As reading improves empathy, increasing empathy may improve our reading skills.

"The better our empathy, the better our perspective-taking, the easier it is for us to understand stories," Professor Mar says.

Stories also may contain social knowledge about the world we can learn from.

For example, in one study, adolescents talk about how books helped them reflect on their emotions and gain greater insight into some of the challenging parts of their life.

And for older adults, reading can foster social connection, such as through book clubs.

"Getting together to discuss different perspectives on a novel that everyone's read is a great way to spend time and a great way to bond with others."

The benefits of reading aren't limited to physical books, Professor Mar says.

Listening to audiobooks can also boost empathy.

"The content matters so much more than the modality so I don't think people should feel guilty at all for listening to audiobooks.

"As long as what we have is a representation of other people, their experiences, their interior life, we would see kind of similar results, similar benefits."

Dr Saward remembers a book that was particularly impactful for her: Claire G Coleman's Terra Nullius.

"It just was a moment where you go, 'Wow, even me, with my brain, I've still got things to unlearn and learn,' and that's kind of exciting.

"I love that every book you pick up could have something like that in there," she says.

Her advice to readers is to diversity your bookshelf.

"Find the thing that you like and then try and find it from a perspective outside your own," she says.

"If it's a hockey romance and you're a straight woman, maybe read one of the queer hockey romances.

Listen to All In The Mind to hear the episode and subscribe to the podcast for more stories about mental health and wellbeing.