Meaning and Active Metaphors

More recent comprehension models see the mind as much more flexible. van Dijk and Kintsch’s schema theory develops the connective paradigm to a more sophisticated level. This theory posits that all readers possess a set of intuitive or cultural story schemas (for example, distinguished foundling does well) and use these archetypes to help them make predictions about where the text will go next. The research supporting schematic theory suggests that schemas not only help readers predict the ending to stories, but can even assist them in making reasonable and usually accurate predictions about where to find information in any text (narrative or non-narrative), which is seen by many cognitivists to indicate that a natural connection exists between text and space – an idea that hypertext theorists like Jay David Bolter have expounded on throughout their work.

 The transactionalist view of reading comprehension expands on schema theory in the way cross-referencing and Boolean logic expand our ability to locate a specific concept in an ocean of information. The transactionalist view conceives of the human mind as resistant to limiting itself to one path and as nimble enough to run through a multitude of seemingly instantaneous connections at once to find meaning, or as Wittgenstein put it in his Philosophical Investigations, “to travel over a wide field of thought criss-crossing in every direction” (vii).  If the reader runs into an unfamiliar concept, far from stopping dead, transactionalists believe the mind simply finds a way around the missing information and constructs what it believes to be a reasonable substitute using the familiar schema as well as other types of cognition. As the users continue through the text, they revise and refine their predictions and interpretations.