The purpose of this exploratory, descriptive study was to examine how children process different tasks of comprehension presented in graphical form. During the Spring 1981, 8 fourth graders and 9 seventh graders were interviewed. The children were presented with graphs accompanied by six questions reflecting three levels of comprehension: "reading the data,""reading between the data," and "reading beyond the data." The children approached the tasks of comprehension by employing text-/schema-based processing strategies, text-based processing strategies, and schema-based processing strategies. These three types of strategies led to both correct and incorrect responses. Most students were aware of the need for, and also used, a text-based strategy for "reading the data" directly from the graph. Most seventh-grade and higher achieving fourth-grade students demonstrated the text/schema integration strategy successfully on problems. Seventh graders seemed to know when to rely on schema-based strategies, even when not required by the example, whereas fourth graders failed to note, process, and/or adjust for inconsistent information on a bar graph designed with numbers decreasing from bottom to top on the vertical axis. (Author/MP)