ABSTRACT
My objective throughout this book has been to define the main characteristics of a reader’s mental representations (i.e., situation models) during the reading comprehension process, by describing the various representational units used for modeling discourse entities and the mechanisms assumed to be involved in representation building. In particular, I have attempted to approach the definition of comprehension in a finer grained way, and to underline what kinds of information readers may call on as they elaborate their mental representations. I have focused on causality and emotion as two crucial dimensions in situation-model building, not only because representations of these two dimensions rely on world knowledge or on personal experiences but also because knowledge related to them is readily available. Finally, I have brought to the fore the notion of coherence, a core concept that allows readers to gradually incorporate ongoing information into their long-term memory representation. In doing this, I have been able to provide some answers to the following questions.
