Anaphoric expressions such as repeated names, overt pronouns, and null pronouns serve a major role in the creation and maintenance of discourse coherence. The felicitous use of an anaphoric expression is highly dependent on the discourse salience of the entity introduced by the antecedent. Gordon et al. ("Cogn Sci" 17:311-347, 1993)…

R. Ratcliff, P. Gomez, and G. McKoon (2004) suggested much of what goes on in lexical decision is attributable to decision processes and may not be particularly informative about word recognition. They proposed that lexical decision should be characterized by a decision process, taking the form of a drift-diffusion model (R. Ratcliff, 1978), that…

There are several problems associated with research using the schema concept. One problem is that there seems to be a lack of cumulative development, with the research being horizontal in quality, spreading out to new areas. Another problem with schema research is that a person not already convinced of the merit of the schema notion can remain…

A lateralized backward masking paradigm was used to examine hemisphere differences in orthographic and phonological processes at an early time course of word recognition. Targets (e.g., bowl) were presented and backward masked by either pseudohomophones of the target word (orthographically and phonologically similar, e.g., BOAL), orthographically…

The main experience of an ideal reader while reading a text is an "envisionment" of that text, a representation in the reader's mind of the content of the text. According to this view the envisionment grows and sometimes changes as the reader progresses through the text, and the ideal reader not only updates and supplements the…

The study of schema theory as part of the inquiry into the nature of language comprehension has drawn attention to the reader's central role in the construction of text-guided meaning. Contemporary schema theory represnts a major step in the effort to move away from a reductionist view of reading comprehension. Specifically, it focuses on wbat…

Much of the current research in reading processes has been aided by movements in experimental psychology known as information processing psychology, cognitive psychology, and cognitive science. The information processing movement has contributed three important ideas: (1) Logogen theory of a cognitive response unit that is sensitive to the set of…

This article provides a brief overview of the various areas of research that have served to clarify the condition of dyslexia. Using topics and content appearing in A. L. Benton and D. Pearl's (1978) text, Dyslexia: An Appraisal of Current Knowledge, as the point of departure, evolution of the definitions of dyslexia is traced to the current and…

Fourth grade students' miscues occurring in signaled sentence combining exercises were compared with their reading miscues in a study relating cognitive style to miscue analysis of reading and writing. The records of 16 students were used, with reflective students and impulsive students so designated on the basis of their miscues per one-hundred…

This guide provides an overview of the language process, with sections focusing on the physiological aspects (organization of the brain), language development, environmental variables, cognition, language deficits and evaluation, language remediation, and implications of the reading process. Appendixes provide selected listings of developmental…

Reviews research pertaining to metalinguistic awareness in young children; examines issues related to the direction of cause between metalinguistic abilities and reading, disparities in research methodology between studies, and commercial instruments perporting to measure metalinguistic knowledge; and offers implications for reading instruction…

Drawing upon reading and text comprehension theories and the sociolinguistic studies of M. A. K. Halliday and R. Hasan, this paper builds theoretical links between the reading and writing processes. The major portion of the paper discusses the five language concepts that undergird both processes: (1) text processing in both reading and writing…

Behaviorism cannot adequately explain language processing. A synthesis of the psycholinguistic and information processing approaches of cognitive psychology, however, can provide the basis for a speculative analysis of reading, if this synthesis is tempered by a perceptual learning theory of uncertainty reduction. Theorists of information…

Examines Piagetian theory in relation to (1) the organizational framework of the reader, (2) the linkage of development and reading, (3) the interrelatedness of language processes, and (4) the twin influences of maturation and experience. Notes the value of Piagetian theory in building reading models and examines two "hurdles" it…

Presents a language processing model that distinguishes four functional components of reading and listening: feature detection, primary recognition, secondary recognition, and rehearsal and recoding. Uses the model to describe and incorporate some recent research. (GT)