Getting Lost in a Book: The Science of Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Have you ever felt like you got to know a character in a story, or felt like you could imagine the world she lived in? Have you ever wondered why the books we read seem to come to life in our minds? Studies from laboratories around the world are beginning to unravel this mystery. These studies show that when we read stories, our minds actually act like they are participating in the events in the story. This can make us feel like we can see what the characters see and feel what the characters feel. These findings help to tell us why people love reading fictional stories so much. The findings may also help us to find new ways to teach children who are having difficulty with reading. "She was lost in her book, " "He couldn't put the book down, " "I was on the edge of my seat. " These are all common phrases that we may use to describe the experience we have when we read books. In the middle of a good book, we may feel as though we have left the real world behind to be swept away to Hogwarts, Middle Earth, or Wonderland. Have you ever stayed awake at night to finish a good story like the girl in Figure 1? When you think about it, though, our favorite novels are really just a series of little black shapes on a page, much like the text you are reading in this article.

How do we comprehend linguistic and visual narratives? A study in children with typical development

“…When asked to retell the story, children often changed the incongruent verb with the congruent one, indicating that they were monitoring the story from the character point of view . Consistently, Nyhout (2015) found that at the age of 7 children track characters' goals when listening to short narratives. Extending these observations to written texts, Dore et al (2018) proposed that ToM is also crucial for understanding written narratives, thus contributing to the development of reading comprehension.…”

Oral narrative comprehension and individual differences in 7 and 11-year-old children: vocabulary, working memory and Theory of Mind

“…Y en el proceso narrativo se esperaría para esta edad un seguimiento más avanzado de los estados mentales y emocionales de los personajes, por ejemplo, el seguimiento de metas del personaje. Nyhout (2015) encontró en niños de 7 años una representación espontánea sobre la meta de los personajes; mediante el paradigma de tiempo de procesamiento, notó que los tiempos de respuesta de los niños eran más largos cuando las oraciones eran inconsistentes con la meta presentada al inicio de la narración (presentación en modalidad oral), respecto a las oraciones que eran consistentes.…”