To ascertain whether subjects spanning the range of reading acquisition exhibit semantic constructivity when confronted with a silent reading task, a study was conducted involving 120 second, fifth, and seventh graders, and 30 graduate students. For purposes of the study, semantic constructivity was defined as the uncued production of inferences based on one's knowledge of spatial relationships and reflecting semantic descriptions located in separate statements in a text. The subjects were tested using an "acquisition/false recognition" paradigm comparing their recognition memory for sentences with identical deep structure but which differed in the semantic descriptions suggested. The primary result was the strong tendency for all subjects to "recognize" the semantically congruent inferences present in the recognition task as having been present in the original acquisition situation. The findings support the psycholinguistic studies of miscues in oral reading which characterize reading as a constructive rather than an interpretive process. These findings imply that further research should be toward a reconsideration of theories and questions of readability. Additional research might consider the type of constructive activity that readers of differing ages exhibit. However, the strongest implication is support for the reemphasis of reading as a language-based process. (Author/FL)