Empathy and literature A neurocognitive approach to education goals in textual didactics

Abstract

In the educational activities, some key competences for lifelong learning are: communication in the mother tongue, social and civic competences, and cultural awareness and expression. They can be closely connected and usefully promoted by using the teaching of literature. The paper highlights how and why these competences belong to the context of reading literary texts in the schools, especially if this kind of teaching is based on cognitive
neuroscience research and takes into consideration the neural correlates of empathy involved in reader’s response to literature.