Describes two experiments that look at how a reader identifies and represents the major topics in a text and their interrelationships. The first experiment demonstrates that readers show on-line sensitivity to the organization of major text topics. The second experiment investigates the nature of such on-line processing of topic structure. (SED)

Describes experiments on how readers understand a narrative. Results suggest that readers combine information about the characters, events, and places with information about their order of mention in order to assign referents and that this is part of the process of constructing a model that represents the narrative description. (SED)