This was also the case while prepping for GRE. I realized that reading comprehension questions were hard because the passages were referring to completely alien

This was also the case while prepping for GRE. I realized that reading comprehension questions were hard because the passages were referring to completely alien concepts which I had no intuitive comprehension of. I used to totally screw up when passages were referring to art, finance, culture etc. Realized that I should develop comfort in understanding remote fields, not necessarily just the vocabulary. I spent a lot of time reading articles from very diverse areas which I thought ultimately helped handling them better. I immediately realized that is the case even here when I read that quoted line. In my case, when I read such things, I just skim past them. It takes some effort to slow down and actually dig a bit more to form the understanding.