"Policy Perspectives" presents visiting authors' own views and/or research on issues relevant to schools and communities nationwide. The idea that reading skill is largely a set of general-purpose maneuvers that can be applied to any and all texts is one of the main barriers to our children's overall low achievement in reading, argues…

Comprehension tests are often used interchangeably, suggesting an implicit assumption that they are all measuring the same thing. We examine the validity of this assumption by comparing some of the most popular reading comprehension measures used in research and clinical practice in the United States: the Gray Oral Reading Test (GORT), the two…

Compares spontaneous and instructed use of lexical, external consistency, and internal consistency standards of evaluation as a function of age, reading proficiency, and type of standard. A total of 108 elementary school students divided evenly between fourth and sixth grades identified problems embedded within passages of expository text. (RH)

This study assessed deaf and hearing students' comprehension of captions with and without visuals/video. Results indicate that reading grade level is highly correlated with caption comprehension test scores. Comprehension of the deaf students was consistently below that of hearing students. The captioned video produced significantly better…

Past research shows that repetition results in increased learning. However, it is not clear whether repetition adds more information to memory (quantitative hypothesis), or allows the learner to use a more sophisticated method of encoding (qualitative hypothesis). This study investigates the process and effectiveness of repetition as a study…

Compared to controls, adults (n=102) who reported a history of difficulties in learning to read were disabled in phonological coding, but less disabled in reading comprehension. Adults with poor phonological coding skills had basic deficits in phonological representations of spoken words, even when semantic word knowledge, phonemic awareness,…

Since E.L. Thorndike's landmark 1917 study of the complexity of reading comprehension, inferential research has generally focused on either inference as a developmental process or the nature of inferences made during reading. In his 1930 study, R. W. Tyler established that inference could be objectively measured. S. G. Paris conducted several…

Assuming that the ability to interpret punctuation is basic to reading comprehension, a study was conducted to assess the junior high school reader's ability to interpret internal punctuation in a written passage. From an examination of texts, reference and research materials used at the junior high school level, six uses of three punctuation…

Investigates relationships between syntactic awareness and reading proficiency. Fourth- and fifth-grade children of varying decoding ability differed in syntactic awareness according to their ability to correct grammatically deviant sentences in an oral language task. Significant correlations were observed between task results and measures of…

Describes a study that factor analyzed questionnaire data and compared factor scores of good and poor college-level readers to determine the text-learning strategies of each group. Results, which indicate poor readers rely heavily on study strategies without an understanding of the text to be studied, have implications for remedial reading…

A cohort of 92 children was followed through sixth grade to investigate the relationship of preschool skills and first-grade phonological awareness to later reading and spelling abilities. In particular, the focus was on the changing roles of letter naming, orthographic awareness, and phonological processing in prediction of reading vocabulary,…

This project examined whether the rehabilitation of reading recognition allowed comprehension of print for 38 low vision adults (ages 37-87) who were former readers. The project developed training strategies for enhancing reading comprehension. The paper concludes that instruction in comprehension has value as part of low vision rehabilitation for…

This commentary on a paper by Diane Sawyer (EC 602 748) on relations between various language skills and the development of reading ability addresses potential limitations in the implementation of structural equation modeling. The commentary concludes that the data presented by Sawyer do not support the interpretation that reading comprehension…

This study evaluated Frith's 3-phase model of reading acquisition with 300 children in 2 cohorts who were followed from kindergarten through grade 3. Varying relationships were found among global language abilities, word recognition abilities, and reading comprehension depending on grade level. Implications for the study and treatment of…

This examination of the reading processes of 36 fifth graders focused on the reader's attempts to gain meaning from three content passages using syntactic and semantic cue systems. The reading strategies of high, average, and low ability readers appeared not to vary with content. Prior knowledge and interest influenced comprehension. (Author/BS)