The movement away from a stimulus-response to a constructive view of memory and reading comprehension has had an impact on both reading research and teaching. Viewing memory as not simply the recollection of sensory data, but as the complex interaction of the sensory experience with its immediate context and the perceiver's previous knowledge, contemporary research sees reading comprehension as dependent on the reader's ability to use his or her background knowledge as well as to recognize specific letters and words. According to this theory, reading disorders derive from either lack of appropriate schemata--that is, hypothetical knowledge structures generalized from memories--or undeveloped control strategies for using schemata. Recent research, therefore, concentrates on how successful readers use schemata to reach an understanding of new material, and how inferencing processes operate and can be improved in poor readers. (MM)