ABSTRACT
Readers understand an event when they can relate it to other events in a text. For several years now, we have used a model of question answering as a framework for studying the processes by which adult readers establish these relations. We have focused on adults’ comprehension of events in narratives; however, we believe that our findings are relevant to understanding how adults comprehend everyday events. Both narrative and real-life events involve people who perform actions to achieve their goals, events that are consequences of these actions, and obstacles to be overcome before their goals can be achieved. It is reasonable to suppose that similar knowledge structures and processing mechanisms are involved in understanding both real-life and narrative events (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994).
