ABSTRACT
The ability to acquire information from print is a hallmark of literacy. However, literate people often take for granted their ability to understand the meaning of what they read. Understanding involves building coherent mental representations of information. It means processing the meaning of individual words and phrases in the text as well as how these individual words and phrases relate to one another, both within the text and within a larger, preexisting knowledge base. To accomplish this, readers rely on both text-driven and knowledge-driven processes.
