The perception of proximal relationships (directly stated in a sentence) or remote relationships (requiring sentences to be combined) in reading materials was studied to see whether children have the same difficulties in detecting the relationships as do adults. The subjects were 22 children from grades 2, 4, and 5 who were given stories to read and then were asked to answer five problem statements about the stories. It was found that children do indeed have difficulties similar to those of adults, that errors increased sharply if more than one sentence had to be processed, that ability to detect both proximal and remote relationships increased with age, and that textual organization made comprehension of relationships easier. References are included. (MS)