Abstract
Discourse comprehension processes attempt to produce an elaborate and well-connected representation in the reader’s mind. A common network of regions including the angular gyrus, posterior cingulate, and dorsal frontal cortex appears to be involved in constructing coherent representations in a variety of tasks including social cognition tasks, narrative comprehension, and expository text comprehension. Reading strategies that require the construction of explicit inferences are used in the present research to examine how this coherence network interacts with other brain regions. A psychophysiological interaction analysis was used to examine regions showing changed functional connectivity with this coherence network when participants were engaged in either a non-inferencing reading strategy, paraphrasing, or a strategy requiring coherence-building inferences, self-explanation. Results of the analysis show that the coherence network increases in functional connectivity with a cognitive control network that may be specialized for the manipulation of semantic representations and the construction of new relations among these representations.
Highlights
Reading a textbook or other expository text is a common task performed by students on a routine basis
The current paper reports the results of a psychophysiological interaction (PPI) analysis examining the increase in functional connectivity between these coherencebuilding regions of interest (ROIs) and other brain regions
The current study examined the brain regions involved in constructing explanations to aid comprehension by examining regions that increased in functional connectivity when engaging in a reading strategy that emphasized explaining material to oneself
Summary
Reading a textbook or other expository text is a common task performed by students on a routine basis. Reading requires the construction of an elaborate and well-connected web of knowledge in the reader’s mind. Well-connected, or coherent, representations are essential for initial text comprehension, retention of knowledge, and the ability to use that knowledge in later applications (Chi et al, 1994; McNamara et al, 1996; McNamara and Kintsch, 1996). These representations that result from comprehension are termed situation models in theories of discourse comprehension (Zwaan et al, 1995; Kintsch, 1998).
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