Reading Comprehension I: Discourse

The ability to read and comprehend texts is essential for all aspects of our lives – work, education, participation in society, everyday life, and enjoyment. This chapter consists of three sections: a brief historical review of major theoretical developments in the study of the processes and outcomes of comprehension, a comprehensive conceptualization of discourse comprehension based on insights from these theories and the research they sparked, and an overview of central issues in current research. The focus is on discourse comprehension in children and adults who are skilled word readers. A complete model of reading in all its facets would also include other, more basic components (e.g., fluent word recognition) which provide the input from print to comprehension processes. Early psychological models of reading comprehension posited that successful readers derive meaning from a text by constructing a coherent mental representation in which elements of the text (e.g., propositions, clauses) are connected via semantic relations.