Expert readers and the process of construction of mental representations: analyzing the text, the main ideas and smaller units of ideas

Abstract Comprehending texts from a cognitive-process perspective involves cornerstones such as reader, text, activity, context, and discursive processes. When related to the teaching-learning process, these elements have different importance. Based on Meyer and colleagues and Van Dijk, W. Kintsch and colleagues, this article discusses two studies to reflect upon and analyze the text and reading comprehension, including purposes, procedures, and problems, outlining the small unit ideas (SUI) as the basic factor to the construction of main ideas and the top-level structure. The results indicate that expert-readers perceive a set of main SUI, although a larger coincidence was expected, besides signaling a prospective use of SUIs to scaffold the teaching-learning processes of reading comprehension and summary construction of younger readers.