ABSTRACT
The papers presented in this volume have dealt with a variety of topics and issues relevant to discourse processing in comprehension. Generally, the research and theories described may be viewed in terms of two contrasting approaches to discourse structure and comprehension. One approach, exemplified by the presentations of Carpenter and Just and of Lesgold and Perfetti, emphasizes “textual” controls of discourse processing and the description and monitoring of processes as they occur during reading or oral language comprehension. These investigators place particular emphasis on the speed with which these processes occur. Discourse characteristics emphasized are sentence structure and the manner in which sentence structure reflects the coherent organization of discourse with respect to both topical (thematic) organization and the propositional structure of a text. For convenience, I will refer to this approach as the text-based approach to discourse structure and comprehension.
