Reading Through Time: Making Sense of Our World

• Anthropological evidence suggests stories were used by ancestral hominids. Rubin (1995) says stories are such a strong part of culture, that they are a universal form of discourse.
• Reading fiction allows us to experience a ‘stimulated social world’ enabling us to practise understanding each other in a safe environment.’ (Mar, Oakley, Hirsh, de la Paz, Peterson, 2006)
• They also say that people who read fiction perform better on tests of social ability.