Discusses how seeing relationships between past texts and the current text influences reading comprehension. Shows how teachers can expand the scope of meanings students construct by (1) organizing texts in ways that promote relationships such as complementary texts, conflicting texts, controlling texts, synoptic texts, and dialogic texts; and (2)…

Memory-based and constructionist processes have both been proposed as essential components of the activation of concepts (e.g., propositions) and the establishment of meaningful connections between concepts during reading. In this article, we argue that a comprehensive theory of reading comprehension should include both sets of processes. In…

In this article, we discuss 2 issues that we believe any theory of discourse comprehension has to take account of-accessing irrelevant information and granularity. Along the lines that have been suggested as demonstrating the memory-based account, we describe some work in favor of the recruitment of apparently irrelevant information from memory…

In recent years, memory-based and explanation-based theories have dominated the discourse processing literature. Numerous studies have been conducted to show support for each of the two views. Most of these studies have manipulated factors in the episodic memory trace of texts, without a great deal of focus on how general world knowledge impacts…

A review of the literature was conducted to summarize how characteristics of individual readers help to determine the nature and quality of their comprehension of specific texts and to discuss how this knowledge might be used by teachers to promote effective reading in their classes. Three dimensions of readers were identified as being causally…