Emphasizing the need for realistic tasks in studying the interaction of readers with text, this report first suggests current problems with research on interactive reading and pedagogical prescriptions on comprehension. It then presents a checklist of reader, text, and task characteristics that should be considered in reader-text studies, including text typology, length, form of display, and authorial intention; reader purpose, background knowledge, and motivation; and the evaluation procedure. The report then applies this checklist to three realistic studies of interactive reading and concludes with a discussion of the reading tasks studied and suggestions for future research. (MM)