Barrett’s Taxonomy of Reading Comprehension (1974) identifies the following eight subtasks that enable students to make inferences while reading.

• Inferring supporting details--guessing about additional facts the author could have included in the selection that would have made it more informative, interesting, or appealing
• Inferring the main idea--providing the main idea, general significance, theme, or moral that is not explicitly stated in the selection
• Inferring sequence--guessing what action or incident might have taken place between two explicitly stated actions or incidents or making hypotheses about what could happen next
• Inferring comparisons--inferring likenesses and differences in characters, times or places
• Inferring cause-and-effect relationships--hypothesizing about the motives of characters and their interactions with others and with time and place
• Inferring character traits--hypothesizing about the nature of characters on the basis of explicit clues presented in the selection
• Predicting outcomes--guessing the outcome of a selection after reading an initial portion of it
• Inferring about figurative language--inferring literal meanings from the author’s figurative use of language