The explanatory power of sensory reading for early childhood research: the role of hidden senses

Abstract

Sensory reading refers to reading that engages all six of the human senses – vison, hearing, touch, gustation, olfaction and proprioception. The author proposes that increased attention be paid to the three ‘hidden’ senses of gustation, olfaction and proprioception to advance innovative reading studies. She articulates the problematic of visually dominated multimodal research and print–digital media comparison studies, and extends the reading field to sensory reading that is not tied to a specific medium or mode of engagement but mediated by individualised sensory stimuli. This cross-disciplinary discussion of sensory reading opens up a new vista for affective literacies and integrates the tensions that emerge between psychological and new media studies concerned with material, ephemeral and embodied reading. This approach refines Rosenblatt's transaction theory and contributes new insights into materiality, ephemerality and the embodiment of reading, which dominate contemporary reading studies.