Reading experience reveals shared and idiosyncratic neural patterns during text comprehension.

Abstract

Language and reading experience foster interpersonal alignment in communication, yet their impact on shared and idiosyncratic neural patterns in language comprehension remains underexplored. In this study, we investigate how individual differences in reading experience influence neural similarity across readers. We used a topicalized Author Recognition Test to profile participants' reading experience across diverse topics and used an fMRI task to measure neural activity while participants read narrative and expository texts. We found that greater print exposure was associated with enhanced alignment with others in bilateral semantic regions during narrative reading. In contrast, during expository comprehension, higher print exposure was related to more idiosyncratic patterns in the frontoparietal control network (FPN). Inter-subject representational similarity analysis further revealed shared brain-behavior patterns between distributed reading experience and activities in the default mode network (DMN). These findings highlight how accumulative reading experience is related to both shared and individualized neural dynamics during language comprehension.