ABSTRACT
An examination of the cognitive dimension of literacy moves us from a focus on the language itself—the text and its systems—to an examination of the individual who is transacting with the print—the mind and its processes. A cognitive discussion of literacy concerns those mental processes, strategies, or procedures that the individual engages so as to construct meaning through the linguistic and other sign systems. Because in the construction of meaning there is a transaction between a mind (cognition) and a text (linguistic), this chapter can best be conceived as a psycholinguistic extension of the previous linguistic discussion.
