Reviews the literature on the effect of prior knowledge and text familiarity on document comprehension and usability. Discusses current methods for assessing subjects' topic familiarity. Presents an empirically based method for effectively assessing topic familiarity. Explains that the method includes use of two subject groups and reliance on…

Research discoveries over the past 15 years concerning reading comprehension have had a significant impact on reading instruction, particularly schema theory. This theory, based on prior learning, which states that the reader uses the text to construct a meaning within his or her own mind, affects what teachers can do to help students improve…

Post structural reader theories--i.e., theories that focus on the reader/viewer rather than the text as the creator of meaning--are considered in this paper in terms of their application to educational media research. Some key concepts of reader theories are defined as follows: (1) reading is the process of creating meaning while viewing an…

Discusses text presentation in computer-based instruction and reviews research that has been done in this area. Topics discussed include length of text, amount of text presented at one time, rate of text presentation, color, text comprehension, text structure, reader comprehension, and new directions for computer-based text. (23 references) (LRW)

Suggests that reading students be taught to write symbolic codes alongside the text to identify new terms, similarities in ideas, cause-effect relationships, important or difficult ideas, etc.; and to use mnemonics to record their responses to the text (e.g., whether they were bored, confused, surprised, or in agreement). (PAA)