ABSTRACT
When reading text material, the reader creates an understanding of what is being read. This meaning-making-this comprehension process-entails the construction of a mental representation of the information in the text, and this representation can in turn be accessed later, when memory for the material is called for. A reader’s successful comprehension of text material is evidenced by a representation that, at a minimum, is coherent enough to account for all the information (the main ideas and details) explicitly presented in the text. However, there are different levels of comprehension (and corresponding levels of coherence in mental representations). These levels of comprehension are sometimes referred to as literal versus inferential comprehension, or shallow versus deep comprehension (suggesting the metaphor of a lake and simply skimming its surface as opposed to diving down into its depths).
