READING IN THE BRAIN: PROCESSES AT THE WORD AND SENTENCE LEVELS

Abstract

This article presents a literature review on reading in the brain with a focus on the comprehension of words and sentences. It is part of Bailer's thesis (b), which aimed at investigating the brains of Brazilian Portuguese monolinguals and Brazilian-Portuguese and English bilinguals and their neuroanatomical response to the processing of written sentences. In this article, empirical behavioral and neuroimaging studies on reading processes at the word and sentence levels are presented, as well as the reading models by Kintsch and van Dijk, van Dijk and Kintsch, and Gagné, Yekovich and Yekovich that describe the whole reading process, from words to discourse. In addition, we discuss the role of individual differences, especially working memory capacity in reading comprehension. The objective is to describe what happens in the reader's mind as s/he understands words, sentences, paragraphs and builds significant representations of texts and also to locate the reader in relation to the components that the Bailer's study (b) dealt with.