Inference making and learning from text via embodied situation models: extending Kintsch’s legacy

ABSTRACT

Among Walter Kintsch’s insights about human cognition was that reading comprehension, inference making, and learning from text emerge from an interactive process between the reader and the text, leading to a reader’s situation model (SM) that depicts what the text is about relative to the reader’s prior experiences. SMs mediate readers’ inference making and learning from text using holistic, dynamic depictions, including nonverbal content that complements verbal propositional information encoded by the reader’s textbase. I propose to extend Kintsch’s legacy by revealing ways that the SM emerges as an interaction between an evocative text and an embodied reader. Gestures, in particular, are implicated as a source of readers’ SM formation that supports increased comprehension, inference making, and learning from text. Exploring the role embodied processes play in reading offers novel lines of empirical inquiry and theory development aimed at advancing understanding of discourse comprehension and reading to learn.

Acknowledgments

Some of the research reported here was done in collaboration with Chelsea Martinez and also benefitted immensely from several discussions with Walter Kintsch, my doctoral advisor, in whose honor I submit this commentary.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.