Abstract: This study examined the impact of interest on text comprehension. Its primary goals were as follows: (1)To formulate a new theory of interest; (2)To examine and explain the effects of interest on text comprehension; (3)To ex-plore the relation between interest and prior knowledge while reading. The following hypotheses were confirmed by two experiments: (1)Interest has a positive influence on. text comprehension; (2)High-interest readers infer from the text more frequently while reading;(3) High-interest readers show greater metacognitive capability while reading; (4)The effect of interest on text comprehension is independent of prior knowledge.

Key words: interest, text, comprehension, information, metacognition