The last decade of research in text processing has been marked by a debate between opposing views of comprehension: One side emphasizes discourse processing from the bottom-up, the other from the top-down. A central focus of the debate has been the principle of "search after meaning," posited by the top-down, constructionist approach (Graesser,…

Memory-based and constructionist processes have both been proposed as essential components of the activation of concepts (e.g., propositions) and the establishment of meaningful connections between concepts during reading. In this article, we argue that a comprehensive theory of reading comprehension should include both sets of processes. In…