Why readers read

  In addition to understanding the input of the reading process, it is also necessary to mention the representations which are built as a result of comprehension. For my particular purposes, the primary internal representation which is built as the result of comprehending a text (the external representation discussed in the definition of comprehension) is a set of three interlocking representations--a representation of the events of the story, a representation of the structure of the story, and a representation of the tasks the reader performed while comprehending the story. Why I need three representations is related to why readers read.

Why readers read may seem like an unimportant idea; at some level, the underlying processes must be the same, regardless of the motivation driving the reading behavior. However, the motivation can have quite an impact on certain aspects of reading   (see, for example, [#!read:ram1!#]). For example, consider the   depth of reading. If a reasoner is reading a chapter which they will be tested on the next day, the depth of reading will be greater than if they are reading the back of a cereal box. My research has concentrated on what is referred to as ``reading for pleasure.'' I hypothesize that one reason that narratives are read ``for pleasure'' is in order     to gain virtual cases; these can then be used in later reasoning in order to augment the reasoner's personal experiences. Thus, even though a reader has never sailed the oceans in search of the great white whale, has never participated in a lunar rebellion a hundred years in the future, and has never traveled with Napoleon in his attempted conquest of the Russian Empire, they can have those experiences vicariously through text.

This desire to remember stories as rich virtual cases led me to the belief that a single representation for a text is insufficient as it does not provide the level of detail which is required. Instead, three representations are built for every narrative that a reasoner comprehends:  

• A representation is built that contains story-structure specific information; this representation captures the narrative as a story being related from an author to a reader.
• A representation is built that contains scenario information; this captures the events and situations which occurred during the course of the story, but is stored without specific reference to the story itself.
• A final representation captures the essence of what cognitive processes the reader undertook in order to construct the first two representations.

These three representations, which contain interlocking elements, provide experiential memories to the reader; each one being useful in different reasoning tasks which may occur.

  At the moment, I have no evidence that this tri-representation is the way in which humans store the narratives which they read. I am making a commitment to the representation due to the functional benefits it provides to my theory and model. Each representation enables the ISAAC system to reason about stories in different, important ways. For example, it is assumed that a reader (ISAAC in this case) will not simply process a single story in their lifetime. This is why it is important to maintain a representation of the story which contains story-structure specific elements. These elements result from a   communicative agreement which exists between authors and reader. The author of a text is assumed to be attempting to communicate a set of ideas to the reader; comprehension is the goal that the author is striving for. As a result, the text provides numerous affordances to comprehension. By storing the story in this fashion, the reasoner is gaining experience in dealing with stories, particular ones which are close to the one being stored. This representation, then, allows the reasoner to become a better reader.

    The scenario representation fills the role of providing the reasoner with a virtual case. It represents the actions of the story and is stored in the same fashion that a reasoner's own experiences would be. This allows a reasoner to make use of a virtual case in the same fashion that they would a regular experience. Virtual cases will lack the level of description possessed by actual experiences; furthermore, situations described in virtual cases may not be as applicable to real problems as prior experiences are. The need to fight off a goblin attack is unlikely to occur in the life of the average reader; virtual cases may, therefore, need to undergo more adaptation in order to apply them to real-world problems.

  Finally, the representation which captures the processes undertaken by the reader is intended to make the reader a better reasoner. If future reading episodes remind the reasoner of one of these representations, the activities performed in a prior reading episode can be applied to a new one. Also, a reasoner can analyze this representation after a reading episode has concluded and learn from it what activities were non-productive. In both cases, future reasoning experiences will be enhanced. Finally, this reflective representation can also be the ``goal'' of the reading experience, in some cases. Consider the reading of a mystery novel. Much of the enjoyment which arises from reading this genre is not in discovering the solution to the mystery. Instead, the enjoyment arises from following the author's tale. This would be captured only in this metareasoning representation.