Integrating Creativity and Reading: A Functional Approach

Abstract

Reading has been studied for decades by a variety of cognitive disciplines, yet no theories exist which sufficiently describe and explain how people accomplish the complete task of reading real-world texts. In particular, a type of knowledge intensive reading known as creative reading has been largely ignored by the past research. We argue that creative reading is an aspect of practically all reading experiences; as a result, any theory which overlooks this will be insufficient. We have built on results from psychology, artificial intelligence, and education in order to produce a functional theory of the complete reading process. The overall framework describes the set of tasks necessary for reading to be performed. Within this framework, we have developed a theory of creative reading. The theory is implemented in the ISAAC (Integrated Story Analysis And Creativity) system, a reading system which reads science fiction stories.