A study investigated the role of visual imagery in the comprehension and retention of prose. Subjects were 48 fifth grade students who orally read a story and then completed three comprehension tasks directly related to the story: a retelling, an oral reading cloze test, and a multiple choice question test comprised of items demonstrated to be story dependent. After the retelling task, the subjects were asked to report any memorable images from the story. These reports were used to identify subjects who reported an image of the story's climax and those who did not. Findings indicated that reported climax imagery was related to deeper levels of processing on reading comprehension measures that do not rely on verbal reasoning processes. The results provide support for several theories of the functional use of imagery in reading. (FL)