Reading comprehension involves making connections between prior knowledge and the visual information on the page. To reduce uncertainty, the reader makes orthographic, syntactic, or semantic predictions. Thus, comprehension is relative, dependent on the answers to different readers' different kinds of questions. The reader does not record a…

The psychological process of segmenting sentences into meaningful units or "chunks" is believed to be an important aspect of text comprehension processes. The most characteristic type of parsing task elicits perceptions of text structure indirectly by asking individuals to make judgments about pause placement in sentences. In four…

This paper reviews the function of literary allusion and examines how this device helps readers relate to texts. Questions are raised about children's ability to understand allusions, particularly Biblical references. Suggestions for research to improve understanding of the role of allusions are given. (PP)

This paper describes different approaches that have been used in research on reading, and reports on a study of reading comprehension in fourth-, sixth-, and eighth-grade students. Findings confirm that there are distinct age-related developmental levels in children's comprehension of literature. (PP)

This study examined the differential effects of a course-based treatment (i.e., students' direct application of reading strategies to their own college texts) versus a content-based treatment (i.e., student application of reading strategies to texts provided in the reading class) on various measures of student achievement and psychological…