Her research investigates the means by which readers and spectators use their sense of touch, movement, mental images, and other bodily processes to expand the corporeal boundaries of the self and enter cognitively and affectively into literature and visual art. This work draws on the cognitive neurosciences and philosophy, as well as the social sciences and humanities. Her second book, The Reader's Eye: Visual Imaging as Reader Response (1994), concerns the role of visual (mental) imagery in the reading of literature. She is currently working on Touching Words and Images, which identifies diverse modes of engaging literature and visual art through the body's somatosensory and interoceptive systems.