The Effects of Reading Aloud in the Primary School

This article presents the results of a study aimed to evaluate the benefits of reading aloud when it is included in the educational program of the primary school. The main goal was to investigate the effects of the reading training in schools on empathy, creativity and perception of the school discomfort as well as the cognitive abilities to seize and visually organize data in an overall view and to understand situations as a whole, besides those of space-time organization, mental anticipation and planning, along with the capability to attribute intentionality to characters. Ex ante and ex post surveys were conducted through four tests: the Test of Emotion Comprehension (TEC) to investigate the perception of emotions, the WISC-R scale, a reorder of illustrated stories for the detection of cognitive abilities, the Robinson creativity test and the Discomfort and School Leaving Evaluation Test (TVD). Results show a significant increase of the cognitive development and a decrease in the perception of the school discomfort in the experimental groups. These results suggest that the reading sessions at school are a great teaching method for developing many cognitive abilities.