ABSTRACT

To suggest that reading is not an activity that relies on a host of interacting cognitive, affective, social, and perceptual capacities would be a difficult argument to uphold. When reading is functional and automatic, it seems to draw on everything we have ever said, seen, heard, tasted, smelled, touched, felt, or imagined. When reading comprehension skills are highly developed, we turn phrases and propositions over in our minds so effortlessly that we forget we are even doing so, and knowledge is easily evidenced in our ability to articulate it. It is through a cycle of integration and reintegration of language and text that literacy emerges, and continues to do so for our entire lives. To some, it may even be like watching a movie in their head. Sometimes we cannot help ourselves from doing so . . .