Situation Models and Levels of Coherence: Toward a Definition of Comprehension

The mental representation of what one reads is called a "situation model" or a "mental model." The process of reading causes an interaction of the new knowledge with what is already known. Though a number of theories and models have been proposed to describe this interaction, Tapiero proposes a new model that assumes a variety of storage areas to previous knowledge, and that the reader picks and chooses which of these models is most relevant to what is being read. These are called "levels of coherence." It’s a dynamic process as well, as the reader chooses and abandons the storage units of previous knowledge as he or she reads on. Situation Models and Levels of Coherence is of professional and scholarly interest to cognitive scientists who specialize in reading, knowledge representation, mental models, discourse analysis, and metaphor/symbol.