In order to investigate the text structure/reading comprehension relationship, this paper reviews recent research on text representation theories. Text structure investigation--research on semantic memory as it is concerned with meaning from the word level through the inference level--follows the premise that sentences are understood in the context of their use if the comprehender has the ability to project meaning to the concept. Five models of text structure, intended to explicate the comprehension of reading, are examined in the paper: (1) Crother's logical relations model; (2) Meyer's hierarchical organization model; (3) Frederiksen's constructive model of discourse proceeding; (4) Kintsch's model of semantic memory; and (5) the Anderson and Reder encoding elaboration model. The paper explains the analytic system of each model, in which text comprehension is assessed by comparing author intent with reader recall. The theoretical base and distinctive features of each model are detailed, and the methodology and findings of supporting research are reviewed. Other issues addressed in the paper include how text structure influences the structure created by the reader, how it reflects what is learned and retained, and how it affects information retrieval from the semantic knowledge structure of human memory. (Seven pages of references are appended.) (MM)