1.1 Human Imagination and Trailblazing

Why is imagination important, and why must we understand this phenomenon? While humans may not hold a unique status in terms of planetary importance or significance, the undeniable reality lies in the myriad effects of human trailblazing: we make tracks and roads, produce artefacts such as literature and art, build institutions and cities, and drill mountains, manipulating the boundaries of places. While seas, mountains, weather, and fauna also impact the shape, direction, and quality of our future living, the human species currently has a direct and large-scale, unsustainable impact on our common future (Frank et al., Reference Frank, Gleiser and Thompson2024, Steffensen et al., Reference Steffensen, Döring, Cowley, Steffensen, Döring and Cowley2024). For that reason, it is urgent to consider how human imagination and cognition, and the interactivity between human beings and their environment, can take on a sustainable form. Imagination is thus a human paradox: it has both created many of our problems and holds the potential to solve them (Graeber & Wengrow, Reference Graeber and Wengrow2021).

In this work, I do not aim to directly solve these problems. Instead, I propose focusing on how we can enhance sensitivity and awareness of emerging imaginative processes, which are crucial for critically engaging with the many local and global challenges we face. I believe that reading is one valuable practice, among others, for cultivating this imaginative capacity and awareness. In other words, it serves as a unique space for training attention to how one either opens up or closes down imaginative processes. Further, reading offers a safe haven to explore the impossible, allowing readers to imagine beyond conventional logic and functionalism. It opens a realm where ineffable, flickering experiences – such as the taste of sounds, transient emotions, and brief moments of simply being – can be embraced alongside grand ideas that challenge current ways of thinking and addressing crises. As readers navigate the words on a page, imagination transforms the act of reading into a dynamic, immersive experience (Ingold, Reference Ingold2022, Reference Ingold2024). This ludic dimension of human nature, where playfulness and creativity converge, could be more intelligently nurtured in our reading processes both in the flickering, rapid moment and within broader sustained engagements. By engaging our imaginative attitudes, we not only enrich our understanding and enjoyment of texts but also cultivate a mindset essential for empathetic connection in the face of contemporary challenges.

1.2 What Reading Practice Has Been, Is, and Can Become

2.1 Why Are Breaks Crucial in Reading, and Why Does No One Study Them?

Consider the simple question: What characterises your own reading? To answer that question, you will need to consider an array of activities that go on as you engage with written material. For instance, imagine every rapid embodied adjustment and gesture your body makes: how you speed up or slow down; imagine your eyes’ rapid saccading or how you look up and away from the page, how you impose rhythmicality, stop, continue, go back, make connections, and free associations, how you leaf through passages, point to the material, put it down or closer to you, how you underline, sigh, laugh, and generally experience emotional responses which consist of much more than the linguistic meaning of the words you read. You constantly make embodied-affective judgements (Benne, Reference Benne2021; Macrine & Fugate, Reference Macrine and Fugate2022; Trasmundi et al., Reference Trasmundi, Toro and Mangen2022). That is, your reading involves multiple ripples and breaks. Yet, surprisingly, the significance of these micro-breaks has not been thoroughly described in reading research.

Conceptually, a break is a change in a pattern; a punctuation of equilibrium (Stewart, Reference Stewart2019). In an ecological-embodied framework, perception remains continuous, but experience is modulated through attentional shifts. Breaks in reading, therefore, do not ‘alter’ perception itself but instead recalibrate how we attend to and experience the text’s affordances. A break is not necessarily a halt or a breakdown. Rather, a break simply disrupts the pattern in ways that alter the anticipation of the next moment. It is an opening. Empirically, it can be identified as a shift in attention or behaviour that impacts the overall flow of ongoing events. To integrate breaks as part and parcel of imaginative reading, a new conceptual-empirical framework of reading is required. This integration highlights temporal modulations in reading and allows for a systematic testing of their nature in terms of conditions and significance, enriching our understanding of how they might relate to the richness of imaginative processes. The radical view here is that what appears to be task-switching, lack of concentration, or breakdowns are instead key for exploring imaginative reading. It involves temporal loopholes or painful suspense in Dewey’s terms above. These moments not only welcome reflection but also foster a dynamic style of attending in reading. This idea aligns with research on perceptual sensitivity, where skilled individuals refine their ability to detect subtle patterns in dynamic environments (Gibson, Reference Gibson1979; Goodwin, Reference Goodwin1994). Just as an experienced tracker perceives meaningful signs in a landscape or a musician anticipates tonal shifts, breaks in reading allow for a recalibration of focus and thinking. While reading is indeed a socio-cultural practice, it is also a personal and subjective activity as it integrates lived experience, habits of attending, and bodily resources altogether, creating a unique and personal reading style. How readers engage with breaks depends on their experience, culture, skill, and circumstances.

Dewey (Reference Dewey2010) suggested that breaks are understood as forked-road situations, saturated with ambiguity. If these moments are imbued with suspense, rich imagination, and critical reflection, there is potential in empirically exploring the conditions that foster their emergence. Developing a sensitivity to these conditions could lead to experiencing many more processes as forked-road situations. This heightened awareness also sharpens attention to rapid changes, allowing the reader to experience subtle nuances and curiosities that might otherwise go unnoticed.

This idea, that breaks fuel the imagination, is not new. In fact, it was proposed over half a millennium ago in the Japanese tradition of Noh theatre. I will devote some space to describe this ancient tradition and explore how the concepts of waiting, hesitating, enduring, and pausing can enrich our understanding of imagination in the context of reading.

2.2 Japanese Philosophy and Dramaturgy of Temporality in the Noh Theatre

An important theoretical backbone that gives flesh to the Element’s argument about imagination and breaks is the theory and dramaturgy of ‘living pauses’ from the Japanese Noh theatre established by Zeami in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries. Zeami, the greatest playwright and theorist of the Japanese Noh theatre, contributed to one of the oldest forms of traditional Japanese drama, a testimony to the enduring power of minimalist performance. Noh artfully blends dance, drama, music, and poetry into an integrated aesthetic experience. Its historical roots stretch deep into Japanese culture, and its influence continues to resonate today (Kono, Reference Kono2022; Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015).

The essence of Noh lies in its minimalism and symbolism. The stage is an unadorned wooden platform, focusing the audience’s attention to the actors’ movements and vocalising. See Figure 1 for an overview of the Noh stage.

Figure 1 Key components of Noh Theatre, highlighting the minimalist aesthetics, rooted in Japanese classical traditions

Every gesture of the performer carries a symbolic meaning, as does its timing and duration. This strong simplicity allows for rich emotional and spiritual narratives, further reckoned in the decoration and use of masks and costumes. Crafted from wood, the masks represent a myriad of characters, emotions, and states of being. Each mask is a work of art, transforming the actor into their character, and adding layers of depth to the performance. To understand the values of a Noh performance requires high-cultural knowledge.

Consider the resemblance with modern reading: A book, like a Noh stage, carries symbolic traces, such as a book cover, pages, and the written or printed word. Just as an audience interprets Noh through their own unique perspective informed by cultural understanding, a reader engages with a text from their subjective position within a broader cultural context.

The slow, deliberate pacing in Noh, known as ‘Jo-ha-kyu’, creates a rhythmic ebb and flow similar to breathing, allowing the audience to become immersed in the performance.Footnote ¹ These subtle gestures hold profound significance, much like the rhythms readers create during puzzling moments. Also, music and chanting play a crucial role in Noh with a small ensemble of musicians providing the accompaniment. Traditional Japanese instruments such as the flute and drums set the tone, enhancing the emotional and spiritual style of the performance. At the narrative level, there are central themes being explored in Noh’s plays which pivot around integrated concepts spanning spirituality, the supernatural, and the human condition. Stories drawn from Japanese literature, history, and folklore feature prominently, with characters that include ghosts, gods, and legendary heroes. These narratives are not just tales; they are explorations of profound philosophical and existential questions. A Noh performance is therefore more than an entertainment event or a window into a cultural practice; rather, it is described by practitioners of Noh, experts, and historians as an experience that resonates with Japanese lifeforms at a very general level (Kono, Reference Kono2022; Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015).

Particular concepts are pivotal for Japanese lifeforms. Among the Japanese terms adopted into English is 間 ‘ma’, meaning interval between things or space in between or a gap/pause. The interpretation of ‘ma’ varies based on context, highlighting the interplay between elements (awai), the spatial gap between objects (aida), or the relational distance between individuals (aidagara). In Noh, ma emphasises the importance of a living pause; a form of bodily tension and silence allowing the audience moments of reflection and engagement with the performance. This use of space and stillness is what sets Noh apart, creating a meditative atmosphere that contrasts sharply with the fast-paced, visually overloaded nature of much contemporary entertainment. In the context of reading, ‘ma’ can be understood as the space between moments of engagement – a threshold where imaginative processes deepen. Just as the Noh performer’s deliberate pause heightens the audience’s anticipation and reflection, reading breaks function as spaces where meaning expands beyond immediate comprehension (Kukkonen, Reference Kukkonen2020). The tension, emerging during a Noh pause, is not an absence but an active structuring of attention, much like the dynamic interplay between silence and sound in music. This principle applies to reading, where pauses enable a richer form of imagining.

Another Japanese concept closely related to ma is ‘senu-hima’ (閑暇) meaning a moment of nothing (Kono, Reference Kono2022; Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015). The term embodies the idea of deliberate pauses or moments of non-action, often translated as ‘leisure’ or ‘free time’. The kanji characters for Senu Hima are 閑 (sen) and 暇 (hima). 閑 (sen) represents tranquility or quietness, often depicting a state of calm or inactivity. It conveys a sense of peace and deliberate stillness. 暇 (hima) signifies free time or leisure, implying a period when one is not occupied with work or specific duties. Combined, 閑暇 (senu hima) reflects the cultural value placed on taking breaks and allowing space for reflection and rejuvenation. It suggests that these moments of inactivity are charged with potential for cognitive and emotional reconstruction. This concept aligns with traditional Japanese aesthetics, emphasising the importance of pauses and intervals in creating a harmonious and fulfilling life.

To understand the empirical dynamics of these concepts, the Japanese Noh theatre employs ma and senu-hima through sudden breaks in their smooth and significant pacing across the stage. This involves: ‘taking a pause, maintaining silence, and in experiencing the deepened chronotope’ (Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015:14). The concept gives weight to the idea that breaks are not just empty voids but meaningful because of their transition potential. In Noh theatre, the moment of no-action (senu-hima), which includes ma, connects one motion to the next. Ma is ‘giving space for inner recapitulation, rehearsal, and imagination [and] is a facilitating factor in dialogical relationships’ (Hermans & Hermans-Konopka Reference Hermans and Hermans-Konopka2010:294). Ma is further described as a basic phenomenon of controlled action-perception and defined as crucial for generating quality in life, rich imagination, and dialogical skills (Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015). Further, breaks in the Noh theatre have been described as the most intriguing moments because they disturb anticipation, habitual thinking, and prediction. When flow is broken, the break constitutes a threshold for new beginnings. A break during an activity can be an imaginative incubation phase where everything becomes possible. When the Noh-performer suddenly freezes on the stage, the audiences hold their breaths, are highly alert, and cognitive-affectively engaged (Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015). The tension is not at all speculative or metaphysical; rather, it is felt and observable: ‘The actor’s internal mindful effort is critical. Superficially, it may seem that the actor has halted his movement; however, his inner tension must be maintained’ (Moriooka, Reference Morioka2015:90). This control of attention is similar to breaks in reading because the reader allows associative ways of thinking to percolate without losing track of the overall project (Linell, Reference Linell2009). When the narrative unfolding is momentarily disrupted, the rhythmic break serves as an imaginative opening where past experiences, present interpretations, and future anticipations interact. In reading, such pauses afford opportunities for readers to reorient, project possibilities, and enrich their engagement.

In reading, this means that ma can be treated as an immanent gap. It cannot be located a priori, as it is relational in nature. It emerges depending on the preceding and subsequent patterns. For instance, ma can be experienced in the gaps between chapters, pages, and words. Ma can also exist within a word or a sound, as will be demonstrated in the following section. It basically refers to the local break within a global pattern, such as patterns of sound, movement, and form. To uphold an event or task where breaks are rich and multiple requires an alert and attentive attitude.

The link between a Japanese philosophy of temporality and an ecological-embodied framework begins to crystalise. An embodied understanding of imagining can expand the notion of the ‘inner’ tension to a bodily observed phenomenon. Or put differently, senu-hima is not just an inner tension but also an embodied performance that in the Noh-theatre is described as kami (the performance of the sound of silence). It indicates how the performers hold their breaths for a while, and that performance will determine every action that follows in terms of strength, pitch, speed, and timing. It seems inevitable to investigate breaks in reading too. And further to explore how ma can be applied to the case of reading and to education and learning more generally. A break is an observable, empirical, interdisciplinary starting point for opening up new questions about the complexity of reading in relation to imagination.

Noh teaches us that sometimes less is more; that through minimalism and careful attention to detail, profound beauty and meaning can emerge. It invites us to slow down, to pay attention, and to find resonance in the spaces in-between. This philosophy becomes a resonance to the accelerations that otherwise saturate our modern modes of existence. Just as Noh theatre draws its audience into a contemplative state, so too can reading, when approached with a similar mindfulness. It can become an immersive and transformative experience where the reader becomes skilled in modulating reading pace. I suggest combining the idea of breaks with the ecological-embodied framework to imaginative reading to generate the defining properties of a theory of imaginative reading. Let us explore these properties further.

2.3 The Defining Properties in a Theory of Imaginative Reading

The core argument of this Element is that breaks play a crucial role in rich imagining during reading. While other aspects of reading are certainly important, this Element focuses exclusively on breaks, as they have been largely overlooked in previous research. I will therefore suggest focusing on three defining properties of a theory of imaginative reading, namely: (i) multiscalar attention, (ii) pacemaking, and (iii) material engagement.

In practice, each dimension is interconnected with the others and cannot be understood in isolation. However, I will introduce each separately and then demonstrate how focusing on their integration puts our understanding of reading in a new light. These dimensions are present in all forms of reading, but by focusing on them, we can reframe our view of reading as a dynamic, imaginative process by recognising how attention, rhythm, and material engagement shape and condition breaks. Further, we can use this knowledge to cultivate specific reading strategies that enhance imaginative reading.

Let us elaborate on the three dimensions further.

Multiscalar attention in reading, from an ecological-embodied perspective, is not only about drawing on multiple sensory modalities in the present moment. It also emphasises the interconnected habits that enable readers to engage in cultural practices rooted in writing systems and language. Skilled linguistic action allows readers not only to understand text but also to reconstruct and re-evoke personal life experiences in response to the symbols encountered (Cowley, Reference Cowley2021). Reading is thus a multiscalar activity, where the present moment of engagement with a text is enriched by past experiences, cultural practices, and future anticipations (Trasmundi & Cowley, Reference Trasmundi and Cowley2020). The embodied dimension of reading emphasises how sensory engagement (sight, scent, sound, and touch) combines with a reader’s lived experience to create a dynamic, layered understanding of the text. This complexity arises from integrating historical and cultural contexts with the sensory and cognitive processes involved. The reader’s body, shaped by accumulated encounters with texts, brings an embodied responsiveness that extends beyond the present moment, incorporating layers of lived experience (Di Paolo et al., Reference Di Paolo, Cuffari and De Jaegher2018). Reading therefore, is not a solitary practice, but a multiscalar process that spans individual sensory engagement, socially learned habits, and broader socio-cultural structures. Over time, readers develop habits that scaffold their engagement with texts, forming a repertoire of nested embodied knowledge essential for sustaining reading as a practice. These include fundamental motor and perceptual skills – how to hold a book, the mechanics of page-turning, the appropriate reading direction, bodily positioning – as well as linguistic-symbolic skills such as recognising style, genre, and plot structures (Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi and Bausch2025). These skills, acquired through repeated interactions, contribute to what can be understood as ‘social reading’, a dynamic process shaped by guided attention to social affordances (Gibson, Reference Gibson1979; Jensen & Pedersen, Reference Jensen and Pedersen2016; Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi and Bausch2025). The more extensive a reader’s historical engagement with texts and the deeper their expertise, the greater the landscape of affordances can be. Reading, then, is an active, embodied integration of habitual knowledge, and the ever-evolving terrain of textual meaning.

Pacemaking reflects the need for movement to sustain perception and understanding. Movement is linked with attention to create a temporal rhythm that enables cognitive engagement. Readers use this rhythm to modulate their pace, adjust their focus, and navigate the text. Pacemaking thus reflects how bodily dynamics sustain a particular flow of textual engagement. Shifts in pace is a break in a pattern of engagement. Pacemaking thus echoes the principles of wayfinding, where recalibrations in movement and orientation occur in response to environmental affordances (Heft, Reference Heft and Portugali1996). Just as a navigator pauses to reorient based on shifting cues, a reader’s break functions as a moment of recalibration prompted by frustration, surprise, excitement, and insight – allowing for a renewed engagement with the text.

Readers (un)consciously respond to the rhythms embedded in the text by slowing down, pausing, or accelerating their reading. These shifts can be seen as breaks in the reading flow, creating moments for reflection, frustration, or imaginative engagement. The breaks can be welcomed or shot down depending on the reader’s training, task, and awareness. By allowing these breaks readers open spaces for elaborate interactions with the text, where associations, new meanings, and connections emerge. Pacemaking incorporates a kinaesthetic dimension that is essential to understanding how readers inhabit and navigate a text beyond mere linguistic analysis. By studying how these rhythms unfold, we can gain insight into the embodied nature of reading and how different paces invite varying modes of cognitive and imaginative engagement and understanding.

Material engagement is a dimension inspired by the cognitive archaeologist, Lambros Malafouris’ (Reference Malafouris2013) Material Engagement Theory (henceforth, MET). MET offers a framework for understanding how cognitive processes are shaped by material interactions. MET challenges the notion that cognition is solely internal, positing instead that the materials we interact with – whether tools or texts – play an active role in shaping our thinking. In reading, the materiality of the text – the form, medium, and physical properties – affects the reading experience, as it is not simply a cognitive task but a tactile, embodied one. Whether reading from a book or a screen, the material properties of the medium shape how we engage with the text.

At the heart of MET is the concept of ‘material agency’. In reading, it means that text itself is not a conduit for meaning but a constituent in the cognitive process. This insight is crucial in contemporary reading practices where digital formats have transformed how we engage with texts (Wolf, Reference Wolf2018). The transition from printed to digital formats alters the tactile interaction with the text, and with it, the cognitive strategies readers employ. Words and symbols, whether on paper or screen, possess material properties that shape how we understand and navigate them. Malafouris critiques the fallacy of conflating semiotic ontologies by equating material signs with linguistic signs. He illustrates this with a quote from Bateson: ‘The lions in Trafalgar Square could have been eagles or bulldogs and still have carried the same (or similar) messages about empire and about cultural premises of nineteenth-century England. And yet, how different might their message have been had they been made of wood!’ (Bateson, Reference Bateson1973:130, in Malafouris, Reference Malafouris2013:90–91). Despite the linguistic connotations of ‘signs carrying meaning’, the emphasis here is that materiality is an integral part of cognitive-affective processes, not just a transparent medium to uncover underlying meaning. Malafouris argues that the confusion lies in assuming that the linguistic sign ‘vase’ shares the same semiotic properties as the ‘real ceramic vase’. I extend this argument by asserting that all signs – including words – possess material properties. Thus, the word ‘vase’, whether in linguistic form or as a physical object, has static-dynamic properties related to its material manifestation. Consequently, the medium through which text is read, be it printed or digital, impacts the reading experience, a topic I will explore empirically in Section 3.

Another key idea in MET is that of ‘enactive signification’, where meaning is not pre-given but emerges through the dynamic interactions between humans and their material environment. This process is exemplified in activities such as tool use, where the affordances of the tool and the intentions of the user co-create new possibilities for action. For instance, Malafouris provides empirical examples of how a potter’s wheel is not just a passive instrument; its design and material properties influence the potter’s movements and decisions, leading to a continuous feedback loop between the potter, the clay, and the wheel. MET can thus emphasise the physical act of reading – how we hold a book, move our eyes, and position our bodies – as it plays a crucial role in how we engage with the text.

MET also explores the temporal dimension of material engagement. It recognises that cognitive processes unfold over time and are influenced by the history of interactions between humans and materials. This temporal aspect is crucial for understanding how habits, skills, and cultural practices develop and evolve. For example, the repetitive use of a particular tool can lead to the development of specific motor skills and cognitive strategies unique to that tool’s affordances. This insight is crucial in the current era of digitalisation, where reading materials are increasingly provided on digital devices rather than in printed versions. MET provides a robust framework for understanding cognition as a distributed, dynamic, and materially grounded phenomenon. By highlighting the active role of materials in shaping human thought and action, MET offers an ecological view of cognition that bridges the gap between mind and matter. It emphasises creation, that is the process of material engagement, such as a potter’s engagement with plain clay, a musician’s undecided engagement with an instrument, or a painter’s engagement with the raw canvas. These artistic practices are inherently open-ended allowing for an expensive range of creative possibilities. In contrast, reading is constrained by the symbolic nature of text. While a potter can craft vases, a musician can compose new melodies, and a painter can create entirely new images, a reader’s engagement is constrained not only by the medium (the book, or other textual form) but also by the written voice of the author. However, there is a sweet spot in reading where MET and the concept of breaks converge. In breaks, reading becomes more than linguistic interpretation of a fixed symbolic product; it transforms into an interactive, emergent process. Here, the Japanese concept of ma – the interval or space between elements – becomes crucial. The reader can navigate these gaps, dwelling on particular words, emphasising certain sounds, or engaging rhythms in ways that are uniquely shaped by her own embodied experience. Rather than being wholly determined by the author’s intent, the reading process itself becomes a site of material engagement, where meaning is co-constructed through the interplay of text, cognition, and embodied interaction.

3.1 Imaginative Reading in Real-Life Settings

In the previous sections, we explored the theoretical underpinnings of imaginative reading, emphasising the importance of multiscalar attention, pacemaking, and material engagement. These dimensions were developed based on Gibson’s ecological approach to visual perception, Japanese dramaturgy, and Malafouris’ material engagement theory to frame our understanding of these phenomena. Notably, no previous research has explored the importance of self-initiated micro-breaks during reading, and therefore, there is an urgent need to fill that gap. Importantly, as Graeber and Wengrow caution, focusing on one thing – breaks – risks overstating their significance. It is thus important to clarify that this particular focus is not to suggest that breaks are the only meaningful moments in imaginative reading. Other moments, equally rich in imagination and crucial for reflection and creative thinking, undoubtedly exist. However, breaks deserve more attention, as they have been largely overlooked and undervalued in the dominant view of reading. Likewise, one can argue that rich imaginative reading is cognitively demanding and should thus not be the focus of all reading practices. I elaborate on this in the final Section 4, discussing when, where and how educators and readers might adopt a break-probing reading strategy. This section, however, systematically explores breaks, presenting them as fertile ground for imaginative engagement, waiting to be recognised within the broader context of reading research. Building on my own ethnographic studies, I suggest that these breaks are not passive interruptions but moments of heightened cognitive complexity. By analysing readers in real-world, non-experimental settings, we can observe how they shift their attention, pause to recalibrate, or engage embodied gestures that reflect ongoing cognitive and perceptual processes.

The goal of this section is not to provide an exhaustive empirical dataset on imaginative reading. Instead, it offers examples of specific readings that can: (i) inform the hypothesis that breaks are crucial for the reader’s imaginative processes; and (ii) identify basic dimensions of imaginative reading relevant across contexts. I do not foreground the specific content or output of imaginative thinking. Instead, I explore how imagination in its broadest sense relates to the ability to manage pace, exploit, and endure the resulting tensions from engaging with those breaks. These processes are valuable not only to the particular content and outcome of reading but also because their emergence enables general experience with critical and reflective thinking that shape embodied habits of attention, and a particular sensitivity towards one’s own pacemaking valuable for well-being more broadly (Mangen, Reference Mangen2008). While I can occasionally comment on the specific aspects of imagining content, it is often challenging because silent reading limits access to private understanding at a linguistic level. However, cognitive ethnography can interpret the overall function or significance in terms of embodied engagement during breaks. A natural next step in this research would be to explore the global function of imaginative processes – examining their quality in relation to reading tasks, their connection to reading experience and pleasure and their broader cognitive functions.

3.2 Cognitive Ethnography and Its Relevance for Imagination

Cognitive ethnography, coined by the cognitive anthropologist, Edwin Hutchins, in 1995, offers a unique lens for studying cognition by examining task-worlds in their natural settings. Hutchins’s approach was a direct result of a critique directed towards cognitive anthropology, his own scholarly fieldFootnote ²:

Departing from traditional views that focus solely on brain-centred cognition, Hutchins’s approach emphasises the distributed and ecosystemic nature of cognition. It redirects attention to the interactions among individuals and their environments, treating cognitive systems as distributed rather than isolated in individuals (Hutchins, Reference Hutchins1995). As the methodology emphasises the importance of studying cognition as it unfolds in real-world settings, it positions itself as an ‘outdoor’ psychology in direct opposition to experimental cognitive science’s focus on ‘indoor’ psychology (cf. Hutchins, Reference Hutchins1995).

More recently, this approach has evolved towards more anti-representationalist and ecological perspectives, exploring not only functional coordination among components in a system but also imaginative and open-ended forms of living (Ormerod & Ball, Reference Ball and Ormerod2000; Steffensen, Reference Steffensen2013; Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi2020, Reference Trasmundi2024; Trasmundi et al., Reference Trasmundi, Baggs, Toro and Steffensen2024). As such, an ecological cognitive ethnography contextualises observations within broader frameworks while highlighting the diversity of human engagement in current activities (Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi2020). It examines how individuals modulate their activities within their environments, considering factors beyond individual capabilities. One of the strengths of ecological cognitive ethnography is its ability to combine various observational techniques, facilitating learning from direct interactions and video recordings. This approach is particularly well-suited to understand dynamic embodiments in reading, which are difficult to measure in controlled laboratory settings. Unlike experimental paradigms that isolate reading as a discrete cognitive process, ethnographic observations reveal how readers actively shape their own reading trajectories through embodied pauses, gaze shifts, and interactive engagement with material texts and their overall reading context.

Moreover, cognitive ethnographers engage in dialogue with participants, probe into possibilities and alternative ways of thinking, enriching our understanding of human cognition and social practices. Questions like ‘How can this be?’ and ‘Is there a different way?’ extend beyond the immediate context and can be situated within a broader historical framework (cf. Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi2024). Cognitive ethnography examines human coordination across multiple timescales, focusing on inter-bodily dynamics spanning behavioural, physiological, experiential, interpersonal, and cultural processes. This detailed examination of engagement is contextualised within the larger world, guarding against the oversimplifications that social theories can produce.

Combining social anthropology with cognitive ethnography grounds general narratives and global observations in empirical, local, and particular experiences. This approach ensures that particularities are considered within the broader contexts in which they operate. Anthropology’s broad perspective enables the exploration of societies and cultures across diverse contexts and time periods, fostering the emergence of coherent, grand narratives. For instance, Tim Ingold has convincingly demonstrated how anthropological analysis can highlight significant shifts in our understanding of reading, critiquing the narrowness of the prevalent cognitivist perspective (Ingold, Reference Ingold2024). He contrasts modern reading practices with historical readings, such as medieval monks reading liturgical texts by tracing lines with their fingers and vocalising the words. This bodily approach to reading, he suggests, is much like inhabiting a landscape – a direct contrast to the detached, surface-level engagement of contemporary readers. He also uses an anthropology of reading to point out that changes in reading ecologies, like the shift from physical books to digital screens, alter our reading experiences and practices to the extent that we cannot think of them as similar activities (Ingold, Reference Ingold2024). These changes reflect technological innovations and societal priorities, and they have significant implications for education, where digital devices increasingly replace traditional print materials. Ingold’s anthropology is inherently social, highlighting community practices, and depicting reading as a way of life for different groups, such as medieval monks or modern screen readers. However, its social interest downplays ontogenetic processes or the interplay between social and personal aspects of life. This is where cognitive ethnography excels, revealing the nuanced ways individuals navigate these tensions within social practices. It compares not only screen readers to print readers but also explores differences within these categories, uncovering the multifaceted nature of cultural practices. That is, cognitive ethnography reveals the nuanced trajectories of distinct yet interconnected events, showing how different features and tensions coexist within a social practice and shape its development. This synergy adds depth and vibrancy to the understanding of human forms of life, here in the case of reading.

In summary, conceptual work must be traced to experience, and experience should be categorised within a broader social conceptual framework. The theory of imaginative reading presented in this Element emerged from theoretical discussions and empirical observations. Particularly, it emerged from empirical observations of how breaks emerge as readers engage in ways that cannot be explained by reference to representational operations. That is, the theory of imaginative reading is continuously emerging from and tested against ethnographic empirical work to illustrate its validity. The following ethnography of readingFootnote ³ thus presents small excerpts that inform the theory of imaginative reading. This section is divided pragmatically into three parts, each illustrating how breaks are important for one of the three dimensions – multiscalarity, pacemaking, and material engagement – that constitute the theoretical framework. As discussed in Section 2, these dimensions are intertwined and cannot be understood in isolation. However, they are presented sequentially here for the sake of clarity and argument.

3.3 Breaks in Imaginative Reading

3.3.1 Multiscalarity in Reading

Imagining Life in a Giant Pear

To illustrate the concept of multiscalarity in reading, I present a case involving a ten-year-old boy reading to his younger brother with their mother also present. He reads aloud from Jakob Martin Strid’s fairytale: The Incredible Story about the Giant Pear,Footnote ⁴ a book featuring colourful illustrations and handwritten text. The story revolves around a giant pear, carved out and used as a boat by fantastical characters solving various mysteries.

Overall, the boy demonstrated excellent reading skills, but if viewed through a code-based lens, his performance might appear impaired or unfocused in certain points. At some point, for instance, he suddenly starts to hesitate, gazes across the pages, and occasionally stops reading aloud. However, when putting these breaks and behaviours into a broader context, his pauses, guesses, misspellings, and gaze-wandering, indicate his engagement in imaginative work. As an example, at one point, the boy looked at the drawing of the pear (see Figure 2, picture A) and exclaimed excitedly, ‘OH I would like to try and live there, man – there is a massive amount of food!’Footnote ⁵

Figure 2 A young reader’s gaze shift during reading. The boy pauses, looks away from the text, and appears to imagine living in the story world, showing how reading fosters immersive, affective engagement.

The boy is not just decoding symbols; he is actively engaging with possible worlds, imagining life in a giant pear and the affective associations that follow (see also Trasmundi & Cowley, Reference Trasmundi and Cowley2020) for an extensive analysis of this boy’s reading). His outburst indicates his projection into the story, imagining what it must be like to live in a giant pear. Such moments of imaginative engagement are crucial for the joy of reading, sparking creative skills by linking the text with personal preferences and desires. However, in functional cognitive terms, this imaginative work comes at the expense of fluency, speed, and accuracy. Further, he glanced at his mother for two seconds before resuming his reading (see Figure 2, picture B). Seeking a response, he was instead guided by her gaze to continue reading in the narrow sense of the word. The boy’s rapid return to scanning the text reflects a self-correction to align with expected reading behaviour, suppressing his spontaneous imaginative engagement. His behaviour suggests that educational norms highlighted by the mother’s gaze and ignorance favours fluency and accuracy over exploratory breaks in ways that might inadvertently discourage the young reader from developing flexible, break-probing reading strategies. In the observations, it was evident how his joy decreased, and as his smile vanished, his voice became less cheerful as he continued his task of reading aloud. Although this case focuses on early reading development, its relevance extends beyond childhood. The ways in which readers are trained to prioritise fluency and minimise hesitation can have long-term effects on how they engage with texts later in life. If break-probing engagement is discouraged from an early stage, adult readers may be less likely to employ reflective, self-paced strategies in silent reading, defaulting instead to a habit of uninterrupted, efficiency-driven reading. This suggests that reading norms shaped in early literacy practices may continue to influence how readers navigate and regulate their engagement with texts well into adulthood (Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi and Bausch2025).

Observing the emotional rollercoaster of the boy – from dutiful reading to utmost excitement and back to dutiful reading again – was almost painful. This observation prompted me to revisit the literature on breaks in reading and imagination research, revealing a crucial dimension in reading research that has not been adequately addressed. The ethnographic data also prompted questions such as: Why did the boy not exploit this imaginative process further? Why did the mother not show interest but instead guided his attention back to scanning? And why do these moments seem impossible to recapture after the reading, as their motivation apparently lies in the actual process of experiencing?

A few days later, the boy reads aloud to his mother from a schoolbook. At one moment he encounters a new word ‘weaving’ in the phrase articulated by a female character: ‘I am weaving dream cloths, she said’.Footnote ⁶ The boy pauses and asks his mother, ‘What is weaving?’ The mother replies, ‘It is a kind of craft, but the artifact is a bit like … Well, I can show you afterward’. The boy’s momentary curiosity is dismissed, and he returns to reading the text aloud, and the topic is never revisited. Once again, the ethnographic observations show how the joy of reading that arises in such expanded moments can be abruptly shut down and disregarded – unfortunately, in a way that diminishes the overall enjoyment of reading, especially if repeated over time.

Memory and Imagining: Making Names of Known Sounds

A few moments later, the same boy struggles with the genitive form of the word ‘heart’ (DA: hjerte) in the sentence ‘the heart’s red blood’ (DA: hjertets røde blod). He repeats it several times but slightly incorrectly as he misses the final ‘t’ and making it sound like ‘hjertes’ instead of the correct ‘hjertets’. In fact, he enjoys this difficulty, and he laughs as he repeatedly attempts to make the correct pronunciation. In this situation, the mother encourages him to read it out loud correctly and supports his attempts and struggling. Next, in Figure 3, picture A, we observe his emotional pleasure in the reading, suggesting that the struggling is not a problem but actually sparks his interest in learning and probing.

Figure 3 A child’s reading journey from curiosity to disengagement. The boy offers an imaginative interpretation, receives no response from the adult, and resumes reading with reduced enthusiasm.

He continues reading, and fails four times, repeatedly saying ‘hjertes’ instead of ‘hjertets’ (heart’s). This repeated error leads to an unexpected insight, and he suddenly comments: ‘It almost sounds like a name … Heart’s … red blood’Footnote ⁷, implying that it refers to a person’s (Heart’s) red blood rather than the biological heart’s red blood. In Danish, heart is hjerte, which is in fact a rare name (Hjerte). As he shares this insight, he gazes at his mother with a smile on his face (Figure 3, picture B.) Compared to the articulation problems, this sophisticated and creative insight goes unacknowledged by the mother. As she avoids responding to his comment, he resumes reading out load, and his emotional engagement decreases significantly, see Figure 3, picture C. The boy’s curiosity goes unrewarded, as his implicit question – ‘it almost sounds like a name’ – receives neither confirmation nor rejection. Although he is correct, his intuition remains unacknowledged, and his mother’s lack of interest subtly signals to him what is deemed important, and not, in reading. While it is possible that the observational setting influenced the mother’s reaction, this moment nonetheless highlights how reading norms are socially reinforced. The mother’s immediate correction reflects a broader tendency to prioritise fluency and accuracy as the primary goals of reading, subtly discouraging pauses, hesitations, or exploratory engagement during reading – despite no inherent reason why these elements could not be integrated. This interaction illustrates how cultural expectations around reading shape not only formal education but also everyday reading practices, influencing how children habituate ideas of what ‘proper’ reading should be like.

The boy’s reading is multiscalar in the sense that he breaks the local, continuous scanning of words, and uses this rupture to connect various scales. He uses his engagement with the text to play with ideas about names and to learn about novel words and sounds, but his ludic parenthesis in his continuous scanning is not rewarded. As his attempt to explore this, in this case with his mother, it not successful, he adapts to the socio-cultural norm of reading which guides his attention to continuous engagement. However, his immediate and almost impulsive temporal integrational behaviour reflects insights about reading dynamics from eye-tracking experiments: ‘The speed of the eye’s motion across the page – but not the motion itself – interferes with perception, and it is only during the brief pause between movements that we actually “read”’ (Manguel, Reference Manguel2014:37). This evidence supports my point that all reading is imaginative. However, if readers are allowed and trained to extend breaks further, they can more deliberately link timescales in ways that allow ideas and impressions to percolate, sediment, and become manifest anchors for intelligent and significant reflection.

So, why do we not train this systematically, this divergent form of reading? This, I suggest, is because we experience, teach and model reading as linear and as a matter of deducing fixed meaning. This understanding has shaped educational systems in a way that over time guide readers’ attention away from deliberate breaks and towards an efficient and economic scanning strategy. Some of those questions are addressed in the literature. For instance, it has been argued that the pursuit of perfection is important for student readers (Jensen, Reference Jensen2023), which means maintaining attention on the ocular scanning and not disengaging from the attentional standards. Further, rich imaginative flickers, like the ones observed earlier, can only occur when there is some degree of freedom to reconstruct previous experiences with real-time perception. This process gives reading an imaginative, multiscalar, and dialogical component, but it draws on temporal processes that conflict with the scale of fluent, stable engagement. Unfortunately, educational practices often train the opposite, deeming such moments as task-switching, lack of concentration, and irrelevant distractions (Trasmundi et al., Reference Trasmundi, Baggs, Toro and Steffensen2024; Wig et al., Reference Wig, Trasmundi, Hakemulder, Holm-Torjusen and Mangen2025).

3.3.2 Pacemaking in Reading: Rhythms and Tensions Shape Ideas and Attention

Exploiting Space-Time

One remarkable observation from the ethnographic reading data, was how several readers demonstrated a change in their engagement, characterised by an observable whole-bodied attempt to endure complexity in thinking. The scene I describe here is marked by emerging hesitation, much like the Noh performers on stage describe the moment building up to the ma and senu hima. Likewise, Ingold describes imagining as a process always present, sometimes lurking in the background, sometimes taking the front seat. He argues that there is:

a kind of imagination that is always shooting of in the distance; and a material engagement that is always holding us back. And this is a particular tension that humans experience. Any artist will agree on that … Imagine you are a composer, and the music is shooting ahead in your imagination, and you are struggling with this pen and paper trying to notate it down on manuscript paper. And a really hard work of composition is holding it there – the imagination – so you can get it down. And there is a constant anxiety that it will all going to slip away from you before you manage to catch it. And I think that is really the root of human life – the imagination.

(Ingold, Reference Ingold2021)

This idea aligns with the case examples below, illustrating how readers manage multiple complex processes by employing embodied strategies to contain tension. The Figure 4 exemplifies these moments across different reading contexts, genres, languages, purposes, and text lengths.Footnote ⁸ What unites them is the observable affective tension as readers strive to hold everything together. This challenge is evident in their facial and gestural expressions. For instance, they extend their gestural expressions in space for several seconds before transitioning into another rhythmic pattern. Sometimes this leads to exclamations of insight, joy, or frustration. However, each phase reveals a pattern of heightened attention and slow textual engagement. One strategy, as illustrated in Figure 4, pictures A–C, involves holding on to certain elements (using fingers as placeholders for thought or text) while simultaneously exploring other spaces, either within or beyond the text.

Figure 4 Strategic anchoring in reading: readers use hands and gaze to manage attention and hold cognitive and textual positions during reflective engagement.

In Figure 4, picture A, the female reader preserves an impression by marking its significance with an outstretched arm, all while searching for elements in the text. Similarly, in Figure 4, picture B, the male reader uses his index finger to mark something as significant, while his upward gaze suggests, paraphrasing Ingold, that he is doing really hard work of composition, holding it there – the imagination – so he can get it down. This interplay between material and immaterial activity is carefully managed, allowing him to maintain his place in the physical text (holding onto the book and his position) while simultaneously deepening his thoughts. In Figure 4, picture C, the female reader integrates multiple texts, shifting her gaze between them and using her fingers to track her position, allowing her to alternate seamlessly between texts and maintain focus without losing momentum.

In other studies, such as dance choreography (Ravn, Reference Ravn2017) or poetry recitation (Gibbs, Reference Gibbs, Burke and Troscianko2017), sensory-motor contingencies have shown to have a stronger impact on memory than mental processing (Noë, Reference Noë2004). By hypothesis, a reader can exploit multiple bodily resources at the same time to manage complexity and thus contain tension: she can point, mimic, vocalise, move, and so on. which supports the integration of cognitive-embodied processes. When the narrative unfolding suddenly is interrupted from its predicted trajectory, all kinds of scenarios can play out: the past, present, and future are in tension. Yet ma, in reading has a cost; it requires extreme attention control, and thus only emerges at significant places. In Noh this is described as an enigma: ‘Paradoxically, it necessarily requires more effort for the Noh actor to retain this posture of not-doing, and activate the internal sensitivity of his mind’ (Morioka, Reference Morioka2015:90). Likewise, in reading, managing tensions in breaks and shifts might be exhaustive, hence there is a need to empirically test when, how, and to which extend such breaks fuel valuable processes, and also what the downside might be.

Pacemaking refers to the reader’s temporal progression in reading, which is not a stable, smooth, or continuous trajectory but rather a punctuated, dynamic path. The key idea is that the more a reader engages in a break-based, varied reading pattern, the more their imaginative power will manifest experientially, enhancing creative and critical engagement. I have demonstrated that shifts in pace are crucial, particularly in moments where cognitive and experiential processes converge at a brink point, creating a paradoxical feeling of being on the verge of both breakthrough and breakdown. This can be observed in the boy’s gesturing (Figure 4, picture B) and the girl’s furrowed eyebrows (Figure 4, picture A), indicating an intense effort to maintain focus and not let the moment slip away, in Ingold’s terms. Such moments are rewarding and cognitively and affectively rich, but also demanding, as the readers claim in the succeeding interviews. The students explain that these moments are experienced as both important and exhausting. This ambiguity reflects Dewey’s idea, that such moments are painful and intriguing at the same time. Further, those processes train concentration and creative processes in a particularly sense-dense manner. The pace changes as attention shifts from engaging with textual marks to a gestural reorganisation that either puts ocular scanning on hold or slows it down significantly. As observed in the gallery, these moments of merging and maximal temporal integration offer alternatives to the traditional reading process, which we will explore further.

Creating Temporal Loopholes

While all readers across the dataset exhibited breaks, they varied significantly in their distribution – including duration, emotional expression, and strategies for either leveraging or suppressing these moments. Some readers actively used breaks to deepen engagement, while others minimised or tried to avoid them to maintain fluency, reflecting individual differences in reading habits, experience, and contextual demands. Some readers create loopholes, moments of ma, allowing them to engage open-endedly with elaborate ideas in a more sequential or accumulative manner without losing track of the overall agenda. This pattern is primarily observed through shifts in gaze. The pace changes from fluent ocular scanning to a fixation on a distant point (often up in the air or straightforward), transforming the dynamic pace into one that is rather motionless. Alternatively, the readers shift their gaze from the page and also initiate a gestural rhythm, such as tapping, nodding, or mumbling. I will provide a few empirical examples of this pattern coming from both interview data and video-observation of reading practices across Danish and Japanese reading practices.

Figure 5, picture A is from an interview with a Japanese university student who describes how he experiences ma in reading. He argues that, in reading, he often needs a moment … to read. He elaborates this in relation to ma which he especially experiences as: ‘spaces between chapters or sections that create moments to breathe and pause. On paper, it happens when I turn the pages. Ma is important to understand what the book says. In digital texts, it just flashes away, but page-turning creates moments to process. I like to read and turn pages back and forth to understand’. He illustrates how he creates ma himself when puzzled and the text does not invite a break; he initiates a back-and-forth flipping strategy, turning a page from side to side to insert a moment of reflection as many times as needed before he resumes scanning. Ingold (Reference Ingold2022:191) likewise emphasises the importance of page-turning: ‘To turn a page is like the wayfarer’s turning a corner, or surmounting a pass, at which point a new vista opens up ahead’. The turn itself becomes the moment where anticipation and the unknown converge. It seems crucial for both imagining and the joy in reading. This understanding also points to the fact that people find reading without page-turning exhausting (e.g. screen reading), and why many children find pleasure in managing the page-turning even when their parents read to them.

The most usual break was observed as gazing up and fixating the gaze in the air. This strategy is observed across cultural reading practices as illustrated in Figure 5, pictures B and C. Readers would repeatedly elicit and engage in such moments, lasting from milliseconds to seconds, and occasionally even minutes. Across the large, cross-cultural dataset, it is observed how this form of pacemaking invites a more open-ended and exploratory, affective process, similar to mind-wandering, creative, critical idea generation, and reflection. The reader’s thoughts during these moments are less important than the pattern of engagement, which reveals a significant cognitive-affective form of focused involvement. However, further empirical testing is needed to explore how break patterns are distributed in relation to skill, genre, medium, motivation, culture, language, personality, task, and so on. Notably, in the current dataset, breaks showed significant variation in their patterns and frequencies across different participants. Some readers found breaks frustrating, feeling that interruptions hindered their reading flow and cognitive processes. As a result, they immediately shut those moments down, and did not extend them or exploit them further. In contrast, other readers (as those in Figure 5) enjoyed allowing their minds to wander and explore their thoughts before returning to textual reading.

Figure 5 Self-initiated pauses: readers create reflective space (ma) by looking away or flipping pages, integrating moments of embodied interpretation.

3.3.3 Material Engagement

Haptic Reading

All reading, as previously mentioned, is multi-sensory. Of particular importance, and at the same time somewhat neglected in theories of reading, is the extent to which reading is an activity involving and requiring manual dexterity – that is, skilful handling by our fingers and hands. Rather than disappearing into the heated debate about the distinctive differences between the materiality of print books and digital texts, I draw on the core argument that all reading involves tactile experiences and thus shaped by the physical engagement with the text (Mangen, Reference Mangen2008).

Recognising the tactile and haptic nature of reading expands our understanding of how engagement with a text is inherently material. This perspective highlights how the physical act of reading – through manual dexterity and bodily movements – contributes not only to cognitive processes but also to the experiential dimensions of the activity. The focus here is on the diverse strategies of material engagement with texts, showing that the material is not simply a medium but an integral constituent of cognition itself. The materiality of reading shapes the task in ways that can both enhance and limit the experience.

Next, I will demonstrate a cross-section of the various strategies of material engagement in reading (which is not at all exhaustive). I will briefly demonstrate such forms of engaging and then reflect on their potential value for imaginative reading. The first example relates to fidgeting and attention control.

Fidgeting Regulates Attention and Reduces Tensions and Stress

Fidgeting during reading often involves touching and folding the pages. This fidgeting is not aligned with anticipated page-turning or other task-oriented actions. The data reveals that children, in particular, use their hands in this manner to manage attention and release tension during reading – likely because of their relative limited level of expertise and because reading aloud, the default mode for young children, induces more stress than silent reading (Kristensen et al., Reference Kristensen, Kukkonen, Eriksen and Trasmundi2024). When they struggle with processes like articulation, sound reconstruction, or word recognition, they often fidget with the pages, engaging in dynamic, rhythmic bodily movements.

The boy uses different fidgeting strategies as he struggles with articulation. In Figure 6, pictures A–C, he both strokes and rolls the pages as he reads. His fidgeting increases precisely at moments where he encounters higher cognitive demands or experience mild frustration. Also, his exaggerated mouth expression, indicates that he is using cognitive effort on achieving precision in the coordination between text, gaze, sound, and mouth movement (Figure 6, picture C). This description aligns with research indicating that fidgeting serves as a regulatory mechanism for attention and stress management (Farley et al., Reference Farley, Risko and Kingstone2013). The rhythmic bodily engagement seen in these images suggests that micro-changes, such as tactile interactions with the book, can help sustain focus by preventing cognitive overload, rather than indicating distraction or disengagement. This observation is intriguing because the fidgeting occurs when hesitation emerges – when utterances slow down, mimicking becomes more salient (see Figure 6, picture C), and bodily movement patterns change significantly, imbuing a form of rhythmic engagement. Farley et al. (Reference Farley, Risko and Kingstone2013:2) suggest that: ‘Fidgeting may represent an overt action that interacts with systems supporting the ability to sustain attention and thus act as a potential route to optimise attention. One possibility is that fidgeting might provide a form of a ‘mental break’’. This break is a ma moment where bodily pacemaking changes and allows task performance to continue instead of breaking down. The pacemaking inhibits fixation because hands and body engage in ways that necessitate a moving-on attitude. This insight aligns with psychological research emphasising how fidgeting is ‘known to be related to stress in that individuals tend to fidget more while under stress (cf. Barash, Reference Barash1974) and fidgeting appears to actually mediate the experience of perceived stress in some people (Mohiyeddini & Semple, Reference Mohiyeddini and Semple2013; Mohiyeddini et al., Reference Mohiyeddini, Bauer and Semple2013)’ (Farley et al., Reference Farley, Risko and Kingstone2013). Furthermore, Farley and colleagues (Reference Farley, Risko and Kingstone2013) report on studies showing how fidgeting can help individuals sustain attention by increasing physiological changes and arousal. Research by Levine et al. (Reference Levine, Schleusner and Jensen2000) demonstrates that energy expenditure increases significantly during non-exercise activities with sitting while fidgeting increasing energy expenditure by 54 per cent on average compared to sitting at rest. Even small fidgeting movements can have a pronounced effect. For instance, Andrade (Reference Andrade2010) found that participants who doodled during a monotonous task improved their performance, which was attributed to an increase in overall arousal.

Figure 6 Fidgeting during reading: physical gestures emerge during cognitive strain, serving as attention regulation and rhythmic engagement tools.

Such results highlight the potential value of focusing on the role of the hands and embodied interaction with reading materials in educational settings. Rather than viewing fidgeting as a distraction, educators could embrace it as a natural part of cognitive engagement. By allowing students to physically interact with books – handling, flipping pages, or even tracing words with their fingers – teachers can create a more dynamic, tactile reading experience also at an advanced level.

Imagining Hands

Another related aspect of tactile engagement with the material is related to the imagining processes that emerge from narrative engagement. In the gallery following, we revisit the boy from the first example, where he just has read about how the giant pear rolled down a hill and splashed into the sea. This narrative is explored further by the boy who uses the narrative, the visual aids in the book, and the large pages to gesture the pear’s path in space.

Figure 7, pictures A and B correspond to the narrative description, indicating how the pear rolled down and into the sea: The boy uses his hands to trace a half-circle on the page, symbolising the pear’s trajectory from the hill into the sea. In Figure 7, picture C he illustrates the splash, symbolised by his hand’s flat pressure on the page. He then gestures how the pear bounces back to the surface of the sea and regains balance (Figure 7, picture D), making the narrative both representative of the text and something more, as he uses his hands to imagine in a way that adds aesthetic-embodied dimensions such as force, speed, and movement.

This experience is highly tactile, enhancing memory as it is experienced both through narrative style and the gymnastics of his hands. Such an imaginative process requires the boy to initiate a ma or break from textual scanning, engaging with the text in a way facilitated by the book’s design – its size, font, colourful pictures, and thick, large pages. Likewise, Manguel (Reference Manguel2014) underlines that the design of the book is not just an aesthetic and symbolic feature, but indeed functional and a result of usage and practices: ‘I judge a book by its cover; I judge a book by its shape. … From the beginning, readers demanded books in formats adapted to their intended use’ (Manguel, Reference Manguel2014:125). The boy’s interaction not only deepens his comprehension but also makes the reading experience more vivid and memorable. And crucially, it depends on reading beyond the lines, enacting ma as part of reading. This observation also indicates that materiality matters, and readers care about the quality of the books.

Figure 7 Embodied narrative engagement: the child uses his hands to simulate motion, force, and rhythm, transforming static illustrations into dynamic story enactments.

Manually Structuring Perception-Action

Another noteworthy observation concerns the use of hands and tools to maintain attention on the relevant part of the text and to narrow down the perceptual field. This technique ensures that the mind remains undisturbed by excessive complexity or prompts that invite further engagement. In print reading, this strategy is particularly effective, as the substrate can be manipulated in three-dimensional space. In the gallery (Figure 8), we observe how young children aged 5–7 read in Danish and English at their homes. It becomes clear how available tools and materials, as well as the hands are used to structure the reading.

In Figure 8 various tools and hands are depicted. The use of post its (Figure 8, picture A), fingers (Figure 8, picture B), paper (Figure 8, picture C), and even an old piece of packaging (Figure 8, picture D) function to hide and reveal portions of the text gradually. This approach allows readers to break the reading into smaller, nested chunks, enhancing focus and concentration. As the reader moves forward, their hands shift the materials or fingers to expose new sections of the text. Much like turning pages, these small movements, such as shifting a finger or piece of paper, introduce subtle pauses, or ma, in the reading flow. I further observed in these ethnographic data, that these pauses often align with the reader’s breathing patterns and small gestural adjustments, such as repositioning fingers or moving the paper at natural intervals. In several instances, readers appeared to pause at key moments – such as before difficult passages, after encountering unfamiliar words, or when anticipating the resolution of a sentence – and these pauses were accompanied by slight bodily adjustments. The rhythmic synchronisation between breath, hand movement, and reading pace suggests that manual engagement structures reading as a temporal, embodied process rather than a purely abstract one.

Figure 8 Manual scaffolding in early reading: young readers use hands and materials to structure attention, create pauses, and manage cognitive load.

This observation is significant because it highlights how print reading involves more than just visual information pick-up; it is interwoven with bodily rhythms (i.e. breathing, pointing etc.) that shape engagement and understanding. These subtle, self-paced rhythms, which allow for the recalibration of attention and imaginative projection, exemplify what I refer to as ‘the imagination pulse’. It captures how reading unfolds in a dynamic interplay between sensory-motor engagement, cognitive anticipation, and affective resonance. Further, reading is managed through a myriad of different technologies, which relates directly to how imaginative reading is constrained: ‘Forms of imagination are inseparable from the material characteristics of modes, from their shaping in a society’s history, and from their consequent interaction with the sensoriness, the sensuousness, of our bodies’ (Kress, Reference Kress2003:171 in Mangen, Reference Mangen2008). In the data, a consistent pattern was identified: digital reading tends to maintain a more static and fixed distance between the reader’s head and the text, resulting in less dynamic bodily engagement, whereas reading on print enabled more vibrant and break-probing embodiment. Here, I present a gallery of readers, both children and adults, engaging with various texts for different purposes. For this discussion, the key is to illustrate how texts on smartphones, computers, and in print constrain movement control and shape the reading experience in distinct ways.

In Figure 9, picture A, the act of page-turning is much more dynamic and tactilely salient than the scrolling observed in Figure 9, pictures B and C. When engaging with a book, the coordination between body and text allows for a diverse range of interactions. In contrast, computers being less mobile, offer a more constrained set of ergonomic options. Smartphones, due to their smaller screen size, limit the spatial field of information, requiring more precise control over reading flow, such as line tracking and screen scrolling. Naturally, the reader’s experience is shaped by the specific engagement with the text and the medium. Observations from Figure 9, pictures D, E, and F, demonstrate that printed books generally afford a more dynamic and varied reading distance. Unlike digital screens, holding and manipulating a physical book involves more than just turning pages; it requires the reader to feel its weight, texture, and physical fragility. Notably, the reader in Figure 9, picture F, mentioned in a follow-up interview, that the size and weight of the book necessitated continuous physical adjustments, influencing muscle tension and bodily posture. During the observations, it became evident that he frequently shifted his sitting position and altered how he held the book to maintain comfort and avoid exhaustion. This suggests that print-based reading fosters a more adaptive, embodied interaction, where engagement is not only cognitive but also shaped by physical affordances and constraints of the medium. Mangen elaborates:

The reading process and experience of a digital text are greatly affected by the fact that we click and scroll, in contrast to tactilely richer experience when flipping through the pages of a print book. When reading digital texts, our haptic interaction with the text is experienced as taking place at an indeterminate distance from the actual text, whereas when reading print text we are physically and phenomenologically (and literally) in touch with the material substrate of the text itself. This may seem a matter of marginal importance in reading research, but I will claim – and show in the following – that it is a matter requiring attention as much more than a mantra for media theorists, or topic of interest mainly to philosophers: materiality matters.

(Mangen, Reference Mangen2008:405)

The readers, in my ethnographic studies, are all digital natives. Nevertheless, the majority reported a preference for reading printed texts. However, practical constraints often limit their access to print materials, as many required texts are either unavailable or prohibitively expensive (Baron & Mangen, Reference Baron and Mangen2021).

Figure 9 Reading mediums and bodily interaction: physical books afford varied ergonomic engagement, while digital platforms impose constrained gestures and attention flow.

Figure 9Long description

The image consists of seven pictures labeled from Picture A to Picture G, each depicting a person reading or studying. In Picture A, a child in a black sweater reads a book at a wooden desk. Picture B shows a woman in a green T-shirt sitting by a window, reading on a tablet with a book open beside her. Picture C depicts a person seated in front of a laptop under a desk lamp, with an open book to the right. Picture D shows a child with his head resting on his arm while reading a picture book. Picture E captures another child in a Fortnite Battle Royale shirt, using his finger to follow text in a book. In Picture F, a person in a red shirt sits on a bed reading a book with a focused expression. Picture G features a man in a red shirt and glasses, resting his head on his hand while reading a book on a desk against a brick wall background.

Spatio-Temporal Overview and Interactive Trace-Making

Mangen et al. (Reference Mangen, Olivier and Velay2019) have discussed the importance of reading hands for memory in reading. The weight of a book and its narrative structure are connected to the physical location on the page and within the book as a whole. They also show how readers interpret the narrative in relation to the length of the book, considering how much text is left and what might happen in the forthcoming pages. This intuitive sense of length shapes imaginative processes, influencing expectations about how much can unfold and the level of detail likely to be described. This information is less immediate in digital versions, where readers lose the tangible sense of the book as a physical, discrete object, and the progression through its pages. As Tim Ingold notes, the lost palimpsest effect in digital reading environments strips away the layered, tactile experience of engaging with a physical book.

The tangible interaction with a book enhances the reader’s engagement and allows the reader to carve out places of potential relevance in the book. This will be elaborated through a few examples from readers we have previously encountered: a student from a Japanese university, readers from two Danish universities, and the boy who read to his mother from his schoolbook.

In Figure 10, picture A, the reader keeps her fingers on one page even after turning it, marking particular areas that are easy to return to if needed. This often leads to an intersection of turning back and forth as the reader engages in higher cognitive processes like reflection or critical thinking with what is read and what the reader thinks about it. In Figure 10, picture B, the reader puts her wrist on the book to keep it open on a certain page while grabbing another book, enabling co-reading and synthetic reading facilitated by the physical affordances of the texts. These forms of material engagements, as suggested by the data, allow for complex cognitive and imaginative processes. The hands function as placeholders, allowing ma to emerge without losing track of the progression in reading. It becomes easy to resume scanning as the hands serve as material anchors, marking exactly where the reader started to read beyond the lines. Furthermore, readers often leaf through the book to get a tactile and visual sense of their progress; this process is illustrated in Figure 10, picture C. Leafing through a book involves experiencing the thickness and texture of its pages, engaging the reader’s tactile and spatial awareness. This sensitivity to the book as a physical object also aids memory recall, allowing readers to associate words, events, and descriptions with specific locationsFootnote ⁹ – both on the page and within the broader narrative structure; something that came up repeatedly in the follow-up interviews.

Figure 10 Hands as anchors in reflective reading: readers use touch, motion, and annotation to manage spatial orientation, track ideas, and deepen interpretation during non-linear reading. Across contexts (pictures A–G), we observe how bodily strategies such as marking, flipping, pausing, and annotating help externalise memory and support analytical engagement with the text. These embodied techniques reveal reading as an active and situated practice, shaped by material interaction as much as cognitive intention.

Figure 10Long description

The image contains seven pictures labeled Picture A to Picture G, showing different people engaged with reading or annotating texts. In Picture A, a woman in a gray and green sweater reads a book closely with a pencil nearby. Picture B shows a person in black clothing focused on writing in a book while holding a pen and some sticky notes. Picture C captures someone in a green shirt flipping through the pages of a book. In Picture D, a woman seated at a table gestures with her hands while looking at an open book, with a window and trees in the background. Picture E features a person using a mobile phone in one hand while writing in a book with the other. In Picture F, someone wearing a patterned shirt uses a green highlighter to mark a passage. Picture G displays two close-up views of annotated book pages; the left page includes extensive handwritten notes in blue ink, and the right page features a highlighted section in yellow.

Finally, reading is rarely about simply making letter-sound correspondences. Instead, it often involves managing multiple nested activities within the broader practice of reading. These activities are practically limitless, but in the dataset, they include writing, pointing, talking, moving, and gesturing, often in overlap. In the cases stated previously, the readers use a mix or writing practices; they duplicate, elaborate, add notes, highlight, and mark aspects of the text which creates a personalised hierarchy of relevance. Writing serves as an externalisation of individual judgment, leaving behind material traces that can later shape and inform future readings. In Figure 10, picture G, the readers’ annotations illustrate a diverse range of strategies, highlighting the variability in how they interact with and structure their engagement with the text. However, some readers revealed in the follow-up interviews that they did not have time for this type of engagement. Their focus was on ‘staying on the page’ and avoiding disruptions caused by uncontrolled ideas or questions. These interview insights suggest that some readers perceive even minor adjustments or breaks as a threat to their understanding of how reading is achieved.

Socio-Material Engagement

Reading is not always a solitary and private activity. Especially in the early years, it is highly social and dialogical. Think of examples of parents who read to their children, and children practising their reading at home or in school. This form of social reading is also where the richness of imagining with the text is easiest to depict for the observer. Below are a few examples of social reading in children’s early reading practises within their homes, illustrating this point.

In Figure 11, picture A, the listener (in the left side of the picture) comments on the reading, anticipates what will happen next, and asks questions, often in the middle of a sentence, enhancing the imaginative potential of the text. The listener here, co-creates breaks or ma. Depending on the main reader, these interruptions can be welcomed as an intriguing part of the reading process or ignored if they disrupt the ambition of fluent reading. At this stage of becoming a reader, those ma moments occurred more frequently than around structured school contexts. This pattern suggests that breaks are more naturally integrated and accepted among young readers, and in non-institutional contexts. Co-reading among children is often messy, highly fragmented, imaginative, and dialogical. However, I observed that parents reading aloud to their children tended to become increasingly frustrated when interrupted by questions or spontaneous storytelling. Parents would correct these interruptions, often responding with phrases such as, ‘We will have to wait and see’ or ‘Please let me read, and then we can hear what you have to say afterward’. However, in many cases, the ‘afterward’ never fully captured the excitement or insight the child had at the moment of its emergence.

Figure 11 Social and material dynamics of early reading: collaborative reading fosters imagination, shared attention, and physical engagement with text.

In Figure 11, picture B, the listener (not visible in the picture) acts as the page-turner, actively deciding when to move on, which influences the flow and engagement with the text. This constant negotiation of the reading pace fosters disturbances and dialogue, also concerning and negotiating how to engage with the text. In Figure 11, picture C, we see how reading is co-organised, with both participants holding the material and collaboratively guiding their focus. This strengthens their shared understanding and mutual support. The adult’s role is crucial in shaping how ma moments influence the developing reader’s future reading habits. Through material engagement and reading aloud, the adult helps regulate the flow of reading within a social context, implicitly modelling how breaks and rhythms contribute to meaning-making.

Alberto Manguel, in his reflections on reading aloud to the nearly blind Jorge Luis Borges, captures the social impact of breaks in reading: ‘I would discover a text by reading it aloud, while Borges used his ears, as others use their eyes, to scan the page. When I read he’d interrupt, commenting on the text in order (I think) to take note of it in his mind’ (Manguel, Reference Manguel2014:17). Through his ongoing commentary, Borges forced Manguel to break his usual style of attending, making him aware of how much he learned to read beyond the lines ‘through a vastly entangled method of learned significances, social conventions, previous readings, personal experiences and private taste’ (Manguel, Reference Manguel2014:37). Manguel relates his own experience to the Argentinian writer Martinez Estrada, who described this form of reading as ‘one of the most delicate forms of adultery’, contrasting it with the common, systematic, and sequential reading style. Just as Manuel learned to read in a way different from his usual style, we can teach readers to appreciate and embrace other forms of reading as well, one where breaks are welcome.

Voice as an Empirical Phenomenon

While the debate on the materiality of text is emerging in reading research, the focus remains predominantly on the text itself, with materiality often reduced to the medium, that is, the text and its affordances for immersion or other forms of cognitive processes. While this perspective is important, it is too narrow. The process of reading extends beyond the physical text and its engagement with the hands; it involves a complex interaction between higher cognitive functions, embodied experience, and the broader text-environment. In contrast to a potter’s engagement with clay – where the material visibly reveals the cognitive processes through its transformation – reading requires attention beyond manual interaction. Specifically, we must consider how the body itself functions as an empirical-material phenomenon, encompassing limbs, movement, and voice. Terence Cave, in Live Artefacts (Reference Cave2022), argues that language itself is material, and what we often perceive as immaterial is, in fact, observable in embodied forms of engagement:

If language is not a material thing, one might ask, then what is it? As I write or think this sentence, shape it lovingly, delete it, rewrite it as if I were a potter shaping a ceramic bowl, is the act immaterial? If so, where is the immaterial domain? The alternative, which would perhaps be obvious if the Saussurean view were not the entrenched doxa that it still apparently is, would be to say that, if things shape the mind, they also shape language, and the shaping of language is ‘like’ the shaping of ‘material’ objects. I use scare quotes for ‘like’ because I don’t think this can be reduced to a metaphor; both activities come under the rule of enactive cognition. And I use scare quotes for ‘material’ just to remind ourselves that, if there is no domain of transcendence, that word is a pleonasm.

(Cave, Reference Cave2022:49)

Extending this perspective, we can reconceptualise reading as an embodied process that includes not only manual and tactile engagement but also auditory phenomena and the physiological dynamics of the body, such as the movement of muscles, the mouth, and the vocal tract. Beyond physical objects, the stabilising and structuring effects of voice and gesture should also be recognised as integral components of material engagement. This is particularly relevant in the context of reading, where vocalisation serves as a creative means of producing varied expressions and emotions. Interestingly, in the following case where an adult woman reads Goethe’s Faust in German, I observed that she shifted between silent reading and reading aloud. When asked why she did this, she replied:

the fact that I hear it – the case that it is not just a voice inside my head, but I actually also hear it, allows me to focus my attention; that my thoughts so to speak are moved in the background … I like to use multiple senses in some way to, well then that is the only thing I need to focus on, and I am not going to remember what I will be doing tomorrow … which I often do when I read inside my head. … I think German is awesome, I enjoy speaking it, so therefore it also … it is just cool I think to read it out loud and hear it, and at the same time feel it in the mouth, how the words kind of feel.

(see, Trasmundi & Kukkonen, Reference Trasmundi and Kukkonen2024:115)Footnote ¹⁰

In this example, the voice, too, is perceived and engaged with as an empirical phenomenon, which becomes attractors of experience. Crucially, prosody is unmarked in alphabetic writing, but the readers I engaged with, reveal how they use it in rich – or creative – ways. In other research, Kristiansen et al. (Reference Kristensen, Kukkonen, Eriksen and Trasmundi2024) described how readers rely on extra-textual resources to go beyond the information given by linking imagined experience with felt reactions – rather than using conventions for instance – because there is no alphabet-based evidence for how prosody is articulated. The authors illustrate this point with an empirical study of voiced reading, where readers meet unusual place names:

When readers encounter new words, they can apply abstract rules, but it seems instead that they enact their default language or produce non-standard tonemes when needing to read them out loud in a literary text. Names often reflect particularly local linguistic and cultural customs, and while these names might be glossed over in silent reading, reading out loud brings the reader into a confrontation with at least its linguistic form.

(Kristiansen et al., Reference Kristensen, Kukkonen, Eriksen and Trasmundi2024:8).

Altogether, reading is more than just decoding – it is at its core an imaginative process shaped by prior knowledge, affective engagement, and creative exploration. While this section has primarily examined how imaginative engagement unfolds through embodied reading practices, it is equally important to recognise that imagination and knowledge are not separate domains but dynamically intertwined. For instance, when readers encounter unfamiliar words, novel ideas, or unexpected stylistic choices, their prior knowledge and embodied reading habits shape their responses. This means that the imaginative engagement facilitated by breaks, prosody, and interactive reading strategies is not merely an act of free creativity but a way to integrate new knowledge with existing cognitive and experiential structures. The interplay between imagination and memory allows literary experiences to be not only felt in the moment but integrated in ways that contribute to understanding. Rather than positioning imagination as separate from the acquisition of knowledge, we should view it as a fundamental mechanism through which new information is understood, contextualised, and made meaningful. When readers engage imaginatively, they do not abandon knowledge-building; rather, they actively structure and reconstruct their understanding in ways that allow them to retain not just factual information but complex reflections, patterns, and insights that shape their cognitive landscape over time.

One of the key insights from studying break-based reading patterns is that many readers, particularly young children, already engage in highly imaginative, nonlinear reading behaviours before they are trained out of them. Playfulness and vividly paced reading rhythms are common in early reading experiences, yet educational practices often discourage these tendencies in favour of continuous textual reading. While fluency is necessary, there is a risk in treating imaginative exploration as a distraction rather than as an integral part of reading. The small, observable windows into break-based reading patterns suggest that readers can engage in these imaginative and embodied processes in functional ways. However, readers often do so implicitly, and on a developmental scale, come to perceive them as increasingly invaluable – leading to a decline in their distribution, frequency, and quality. This Element argues that bringing awareness to these moments – through education, guided self-regulation, and reader training – can allow individuals to cultivate a dynamic relationship with texts and thus avoid unconsciously suppressing imaginative engagement over time.

My aim has been to empirically and theoretically underscore how breaks enable processes of imagining – an aspect that has been largely overlooked – rather than to assess the actual content or quality of what is imagined. However, preliminary observations suggest that these breaks correlate with more vivid and engaging reading experiences, making them an essential phenomenon for both theoretical inquiry and educational practice (Toro & Trasmundi, Reference Trasmundi2024). Recognising and addressing the role of these breaks – not only when they are functional but also when they might disrupt the reading experience – is crucial for research and pedagogy alike. Moving forward, an important next step is to examine what exactly happens during these moments of imaginative engagement – how they function (or, at times, hinder) the reading process and the task at hand. In the final Section 4, I extend this discussion by considering the broader implications of my argument for education and research.

4.1 An Educational Program for Imaginative Reading

In the first half of the twentieth century, the philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey argued for a theory of experiential learning. Central to Dewey’s theory is the principle of continuity, often referred to as an experiential continuum (Dewey, Reference Dewey1997). This principle suggests that all experiences build upon previous ones and influence future experiences, meaning that learning is not a series of isolated events but a connected, ongoing process. However, as noted in the introduction, not all education fosters growth – learning can also take the form of miseducation, where misguided or harmful knowledge impedes development. This model of education resonates strongly with the ecological-embodied approach to imaginative reading that has been central to this Element’s argument. While all reading involves some degree of imaginative engagement, not all reading grasps the imagination’s full potential. Dewey’s ideas remind us that the quality and depth of our experiences, including reading experiences, vary greatly, and that attention must be paid to the conditions under which this imaginative engagement can be best enriched.

This section synthesises the theoretical foundations laid out in Sections 1 through 3, presenting an educational program that operationalises the core insights into imaginative reading. The key focus is on cultivating new habits of reading, where breaks – moments of reflection and re-engagement with the text – become a pivotal element. These breaks, or ma, disrupt the continuous flow of reading and introduce opportunities for cognitive and emotional engagement. One critical concern is that pedagogical practices from the very beginning of reading instruction often (unconsciously) suppress moments for creative engagement. If early imaginative and exploratory experiences are consistently discouraged, children may come to view reading only as an exercise in information processing, rather than as an activity in which they can modulate their own engagement, adjust their pace, and dynamically shift between immersion and critical reflection. The current emphasis on fluency and continuous symbol recognition – while essential – can therefore inadvertently train children to shut down the very moments that correlate with joy, curiosity, and self-efficacy in reading as described in the previous section. It is important to clarify that a break-probing strategy in reading does not compete with fluency-building but rather complement it at different stages of reading development. Automaticity in word recognition, for instance, is essential for reducing cognitive load, allowing readers to engage with texts at functional levels (Stanovich, Reference Stanovich1986), yet we have also observed how both becoming and expert readers benefit from the ability to regulate their attention and strategically integrate breaks in reading. This indicates that controlled breaks, such as pauses and changes in rhythmical embodied pacemaking are crucial for imaginative reading, rather than obstacles to it. In this sense, breaks should not be seen as disruptions to fluency, but rather as complementary mechanisms that serve to engage the reader in creative ways. Teaching students to balance fluency with reflective breaks may, in fact, enhance comprehension, as controlled variations in reading speed have been shown to influence retention and meaning-making processes (Kuhn & Stahl, Reference Kuhn and Stahl2003).

While this Element has focused on how breaks facilitate imaginative engagement in general, it is important to clarify that the role and function of breaks vary depending on the reader’s level of fluency. The precise nature of these variations remains an open question for further research. However, the examples in Section 3 illustrate that readers across all levels – from emerging to expert – engage in imaginative processes that extend beyond mere symbolic understanding. This suggests that breaks play a significant role in fostering engagement across different reading proficiencies, shaping how readers interact with and understand texts.

Importantly, this Element does not suggest that self-elicited breaks should be encouraged at all stages of all reading or that they are always functional. Rather, it highlights their overlooked role and calls for further research into how different forms of regulating the pace – whether spontaneous or structured – affect comprehension, fluency, and engagement across developmental stages. Future pedagogical approaches should consider how young readers can develop an awareness of their own attention – learning to regulate and sense their reading flow, recognising when to explore a break, when to ignore it, and when to modulate their pace. This self-awareness of engagement rhythms – the imagination pulse – is an acquired skill of attentional sensitivity, and its development should be supported by empirical research that explores what young readers can manage and how pedagogical strategies can foster both fluency and rich imaginative interaction with reading material.

Crucially, I do not suggest that reading is a completely freeform activity where interpretation is limitless. Imagination, while generative, is structured by textual constraints, cultural contexts, and prior knowledge. Even in highly creative reading experiences, meaning-making is guided by the affordances emerging from the engagement with the text itself – such as its syntax, structure, and embedded references. Thus, imaginative reading does not imply a detachment from textual information but rather an enriched and dynamic engagement with it. Additionally, it is important to recognise that imagination and reflection in reading do not occur in opposition to structured comprehension and analysis. Instead, they function as integrated processes that allow the reader to navigate between different cognitive modes – moving between the literal and the imaginative, the material and the immaterial, the expected and the novel. This perspective helps clarify that breaks are not about maximising imaginative freedom at the expense of comprehension, but about fostering a more layered, engaged, and personally meaningful interaction with the text.

However, to turn this theory into a practical educational framework, two key areas must be addressed. First, educators and policymakers must recognise the importance of breaks in reading, understanding that these moments are not interruptions but essential spaces for imagination to grow. Second, there must be a greater focus on integrating the ecological-embodied model into everyday educational practices, with attention to how multiscalar attention, pacemaking, and material engagement can be taught and cultivated.

4.2 Multiscalar Attention

At the core of imaginative reading lies the capacity for multiscalar attention – the ability to integrate multiple scales. A reader might begin with a simple focus of symbolic words but, through careful attention, shift between different temporal and experiential layers: connecting the text to their past experiences, imagining future possibilities, and making sense of the social and cultural implications embedded in the narrative. The break, or ma, is an exceptional moment where these scales can be integrated and explored further – the reader, free from the momentum of the linear text and its style, can engage in reflective thought or aesthetic exploration, for example, by paying attention to sound, shapes, scents, memories, and so on. For example, consider a student reading a passage about a character facing a moral dilemma. Without modulation of reading flow, the student might simply follow the plot. However, by changing the pace – whether by slowing down, gazing up, or momentarily disengaging from the text – they become more attuned to both macro-level reflections (such as how the dilemma connects to broader ethical questions or personal experiences) and micro-level affective responses – a fleeting sense of justice or guilt, a sudden chill that heightens emotional arousal, or an unexpected feeling of attachment to a character. These in-the-moment breaks create space for embodied and emotional engagement, whereas post-reading reflection typically shifts towards more structured, analytical comprehension. Such structured activity is typically modelled through analytical questions such as, ‘How do you think the protagonist feels?’ or ‘What is the right thing to do?’ While these prompts encourage readers to connect the textual world with their own perspectives, they constitute analysis rather than reading itself. By prioritising intellectual interpretation, such questions risk over-intellectualising the reading experience, leaving little room for more subtle, embodied engagements – such as the sensory taste of words, the rhythm of language, or the flickering, affective nuances that arise in the moment of reading. Moments that we observed as truly emotional and joyful.

To integrate these brief yet meaningful moments, educators could design reading exercises that encourage students to capture their emerging connections during the act of reading. Instead of postponing reflection until after the reading, students could be encouraged to write down thoughts and judgements as they emerge, for instance using reading journals, capturing moments of engagement, reflection, and emotional response. This practice enhances not only comprehension but also transforms the reading process into a participatory dialogue with the text, enriching both the imaginative and cognitive dimensions of the experience. Further, these activities help students become aware of how they can shift between different levels of attention and understanding during reading, fostering richer and more imaginative engagement that resonates equally with emergent embodied emotions and logical analysis of information. It thus gives the readers a direct understanding that their reading is a creative process that transcends mere inferencing or linguistic meaning-making of written words. It links what they perceive with experiential and future timescales that create phenomena like hope, aspirations, uncertainties, and so on. They do the reading. This multiscalar integration enables the reader to generate novelties, new meanings, and connections, engaging in a dialogue with the text that is not limited to the words on the page or reduced to later analysis.

4.3 Pacemaking: Managing Rhythms and Tensions

Pacemaking refers to the way readers manage the rhythms of engagement and reflection during reading. As discussed in earlier sections, the concept of ma, derived from Japanese aesthetics and dramaturgy, emphasises the significance of living pauses, intervals and creation. These breaks are not empty voids; they are spaces where the reader can slow down, reflect, and recalibrate their relationship with the text.

In educational settings, helping students understand the importance of pacing in reading can significantly enhance their ability to engage with complex texts. Pacemaking is an attribute of human agency, but it can be treated as a skill that allows readers to consciously modulate their temporal engagement with a text, recognising when to slow down and reflect or when to let the narrative flow forward. Teaching students to play with embodied pace patterns in their reading can help them become more resilient and adaptable readers, capable of handling a wide range of textual demands – from the lyrical and poetic to the dense and theoretical. Students can learn to pacemake deliberately, and as the ability to move beyond the drive for efficiency – reading quickly and smoothly – and instead recognising that pauses are integral to cognitive and imaginative growth. These rhythms of reading allow students to experience texts more dynamically, moving between quick skimming and slower immersion. The idea is not to disrupt the flow for its own sake, but to create spaces where the reader’s thoughts can gestate and evolve.

For instance, a teacher might guide students through an exercise where they pause after particularly striking or complex passages – whether a sound, word, sentence, or plot point – allowing time for reflection and creative association. Crucially, this does not need to be ‘meaningful’ in the traditional sense but fosters a heightened sensitivity to reading beyond a simplistic view. The goal is to help students develop an intuitive sense of when to slow down and when to move forward, encouraging them to navigate the text according to its imaginative and cognitive demands. This tension between movement and pause is a productive one: it allows students to explore ideas more thoroughly, notice nuances in the text, and generate their own understanding by integrating experience with a given task. It fosters resilience in reading, as students become more adaptable in their approach, able to engage meaningfully with texts of varying complexity.

These activities can be structured around guided prompts, encouraging students to dwell on certain aspects of the text, explore their emotional responses, or make connections with other texts they have read. Importantly, pacemaking plays a crucial role in cultivating the ability to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. Intentional pauses create moments of tension or unresolved ideas that require further reflection, rather than immediate resolution. A pause compels the reader to remain in a challenging or uncertain space – one that might otherwise be avoided by simply moving forward. By learning to engage with these moments rather than bypass them, students develop a nuanced reading practice that embraces complexity and interpretive openness.

4.4 Material Engagement: The Physicality of Reading

The theory of Material Engagement (MET) emphasises that cognition is not confined to the brain but extends into our interactions with the world. In the context of reading, this means that the act of bodily interacting with a text – whether it is turning pages, making annotations, or highlighting – plays a significant role in shaping cognitive and imaginative processes. Educationally, MET implies that we must reconnect readers with the materiality of reading. Encouraging students to underline key passages or take notes in the margins can enhance their engagement with the material. These practices activate different sensory modalities, making the reading experience more immersive and bodily vibrant. For example, Delgado et al. (Reference Delgado, Vargas, Ackerman and Salmerón2018) suggest that students who interact with texts – through annotation or note-taking – are more likely to retain information and develop greater insights. In digital environments, educators can encourage the use of tools like highlighting, commenting, and sharing annotations in collaborative spaces, thus creating a multi-dimensional reading practice where students can engage both individually and communally.

Furthermore, this material engagement is closely linked to the concept of breaks, or ma. Breaks in reading not only provide cognitive space for reflection but are often accompanied by shifts in material interaction, such as pausing to underline a key passage or turning back to a previous section. These motor actions reinforce the reflective space of the break, allowing readers to engage with the text in both cognitive and embodied, multimodal ways. We understand this intuitively, yet educators often rely on heuristics, offering generic instructions like ‘take notes’ without guiding students on what to focus on. Readers need to be taught not only what to pay attention to but also how pacemaking itself makes them aware of different rhythms in the text.

4.5 Practical Applications and Future Directions

To apply the principles of multiscalar attention, pacemaking, and material engagement in educational settings, we must move away from traditional, linear approaches to reading instruction and embrace a more embodied and experimental pedagogy. This pedagogy should be designed to include and cultivate imagination, reflection, and critical thinking. Importantly, imagining here is not measured in terms of impactful outcome, but instead in terms of the sensibility and awareness of attention to aspects beyond the text. Reading is not just a skill to be optimised but a process that shapes how we engage with meaning, and our environment. While fluency, efficiency, and comprehension have long been prioritised in reading research, this Element highlights an equally crucial but often overlooked dimension: the role of pacing, pausing, and embodied engagement in fostering a critical and curious connection to texts. This work suggests that certain reading practices – especially those that suppress exploratory engagement, imaginative attunement, and self-regulated pauses – can limit the depth of a reader’s experience and learning. Future research should explore how pedagogical approaches can incorporate a balance between fluency-building and imaginative engagement, ensuring that reading remains not only a skill but also a meaningful, enriching process of relating. One promising direction for integrating imaginative reading with empirical models of reading is to align this framework with Art Jacobs’ Neurocognitive Poetics Model (Jacobs, Reference Jacobs2015). This model emphasises reading speed as a crucial parameter and highlights how cognitive-emotional interactions shape literary engagement. The intersection between the ecological-embodied approach and Jacobs’ model offers a way to understand how breaks function not merely as moments of distraction but as integral components of an affectively and cognitively regulated reading experience. By incorporating such insights from neurocognitive poetics, future research could explore how pacing strategies influence the depth of engagement, linking subjective reading experiences with measurable parameters of reading fluency and emotional response. These insights could also be extended into educational settings, helping students develop both automaticity in reading and the ability to regulate imaginative engagement dynamically. Further research might also consider how this aligns with integrative frameworks that examine reading as a multimodal, embodied practice (cf. Jacobs, Reference Jacobs2015).

By integrating the ecological-embodied model of reading into educational practices, we create a space for students to engage in imaginative experimentation with texts. This approach involves not just reading for fluency or comprehension but engaging with the experience of reading – acknowledging that reading is an embodied, multi-sensory, and temporally layered practice.

Ultimately, this shift in focus – from mere fluency to imaginative engagement – will cultivate a new generation of readers who are not only adept at understanding complex texts but also capable of rethinking and reshaping their own sensitivity during reading.

4.6 Conclusion: Cultivating Imaginative and Critical Readers

As we confront the complex challenges of the Anthropocene – marked by environmental crises, socio-political instability, and technological transformations – the need for imaginative and critical thinkers becomes increasingly urgent. This Element has proposed that reading, far from being an interpretive and mental activity, is one powerful tool for cultivating these qualities.

By focusing on multiscalar attention, pacemaking, and material engagement, educators can foster an imaginative approach to reading – one that encourages students not only to comprehend linguistic meaning, but to question, reflect, and imagine new vistas. Reading, in this sense, becomes a site of both personal transformation and social possibility.

In conclusion, the future of education lies in our ability to nurture readers who are not only proficient but also imaginative and engaged – individuals who can approach the world’s complexities with creativity, empathy, and critical insight. The imaginative power of reading, as this Element has sought to demonstrate, holds the potential to shape not just how we read but how we live.