There is always some kind of selecting out from a matrix of past experiences of language as a phenomenon in particular contexts. Thus the reader draws on this experiential reservoir in even the simplest reading. When only the simplest phonological experience is drawn on, someone has said that the child "barks at the page."
As soon as meaning enters, there is not only a recognition of shapes of letters and a linkage with sounds; there is also a sorting out of past experiences with the sounds as symbols or words, and with what the words pointed to in different contexts. "Interpretaion," a selective and synthesizing activity, is thus engaged in by the reader even in the most elementary kind of reading.