ABSTRACT
Reading comprehension is one of the most complex and uniquely human of cognitive activities. During reading, the successful comprehender connects the various events, persons, and objects that he or she encounters so that the text appears to be a coherent whole rather than a random list of facts and events. Frequently, the relations between parts of a text are implicit and, therefore, must be inferred. If all goes well, the result of inferential processing is a mental representation of the text that is relatively stable and that can be accessed at a later point in time to answer questions, retell the story, and so forth.
