Discourse comprehension Created 2026-10-25 Updated 2026-11-05
Discourse comprehension is understanding connected language across sentences or utterances. It includes tracking referents, linking events and using relevant background knowledge in comprehension to build a coherent interpretation. For example, resolving who a later pronoun refers to can require information from an earlier sentence. Correctly recognizing every word does not alone establish that these relationships were understood. [ref]
Children's reading comprehension ability: concurrent prediction by working memory, verbal ability, and component skills by Kate Cain and others. 2004, component skills and text comprehension
Linguistic comprehension Created 2026-10-25 Updated 2026-11-05
Linguistic comprehension is understanding linguistic content, including word meanings, sentence relations and discourse comprehension. It is broader than one particular listening test. In the simple view of reading, it is distinguished from word decoding: a person can understand a spoken sentence yet be unable to identify the same words in print. Comparing the two components helps explain different profiles of reading comprehension. [ref]
The simple view of reading by Wesley A. Hoover and Philip B. Gough. 1990, component distinction and reading model