Successful reading comprehension is not a guarantee, even for highly skilled readers. When comprehension fails, the ability of the reader to recognize the failure may be critical to avoiding "mis"comprehension (i.e., false confidence in an inaccurate text representation) and to taking steps to improve comprehension. Generally, people…

Readers read for different purposes and the texts they read vary in topic and difficulty. These situational factors influence standards of coherence--how much understanding a reader aims to have for a given text. Three studies examined whether individual differences in reader-based standards of coherence influenced off-line and on-line…