A schema-theoretic view of basic processes in reading comprehension

Abstract

… to completely analyze what we do when we read would almost be the acme of a psychologist's dream for it would be to describe very many of the most intricate workings of the human mind, as well as to unravel the tangled story of the most remarkable specific performance that civilization has learned in all its history. (Huey, 1908/1968, p. 8) Huey's eloquent statement about the goals of the psychology of reading is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it in 1908. The quotation usually precedes an apology for how little we have learned in the past 75 years. We wish to break with that tradition and use Huey's statement to introduce an essay in which we will try to demonstrate that while we have not fully achieved Huey's goal, we have made substantial progress. Our task is to characterize basic processes of reading comprehension. We will not present a model of the entire reading process, beginning with the focusing of the eye on the printed page and ending with the encoding of information into long-term semantic memory or its subsequent retrieval for purposes of demonstrating comprehension to someone in the outer world. Instead, we will focus on one aspect of comprehension of particular importance to reading comprehension: the issue of how the reader's schemata or knowledge already stored in memory, function in the process of interpreting new information and allowing it to enter and become a part of the knowledge store.