ABSTRACT
This chapter describes a general theory of comprehension. The theory of text comprehension is a comprehension model in the sense, but it leaves room for problem solving and planning when that becomes necessary to complement normal reading. Theorists interested in text comprehension talk about the outcome of comprehension in terms of mental representations. The chapter focuses on the application of that theory to important research topics in the area of discourse comprehension: how words are identified in a discourse context, the representation of knowledge, the construction of macrostructures and situation models, and the role of inferences and working memory. It presents the open research questions, most pressingly about the formation of situation models and the modeling of macrostructures. The chapter shows how nontrivial comprehension assessment is. The levels of comprehension range from the superficial to the deep, from surface features to the textbase to the situation model.
