Reading comprehension as a cognitive process

Abstract

Starting from the presumption that one of the aims of reading is comprehension, reflections will be developed about the following questions: What our body/ brain does when we read? How does the relationship between reading and comprehension work? Is it possible to evaluate reading comprehension? The Belgian surrealistic painter René Magritte (1898-1967), in the work entitled “Ceci n´est pas une pipe”, illustrates in a brilliant way the cognitive phenomenon characteristic of the human species: the symbolic capability, i.e., the capability of constructing and recovering meanings from a set of symbols or signs. The representation of a pipe in Magritte´s work carries us immediately to the pipe object, as does the printed word “pipe”. What cognitive processes are playing a role and allows the proficient reader, while reading, not to see the individual letters, but the words, or even better, the meaning of the words? Is this symbolic capability present in its entirety from birth? If not, how does it develop? All those questions guided our participation in the conference session “Reading and Cognition”.