A model is proposed that attempts to provide some order for the disparate findings with respect to the effects of signaling in text on recall. The type of signaling examined is that which explicitly cues the relationships among the major propositions in the text structure. It is noted that while it is generally assumed that such signaling is an…

This report describes part of a longer study on sentence comprehension. The long range goal is to identify distinct levels of processing in terms of the types of linguistic and extralinguistic information each level uses. The focus of this part of the study is sentences with filler-gap relations, such as, "This is the girl the teacher wanted to…

Research has identified three reading strategies that are affected in various ways by signaling--the emphasis of superordinate relationships in text. Using a structure strategy, readers follow the text's superordinate relations to focus on the text's message and how it relates to supportive details. Readers who use the detail/list strategy focus…

A study of the process of listeners' and readers' generation and verification of expectations about spoken and written discourse presented to them examined the possible interactions between surface form and cognitive constraints, to establish baseline measures of the effectiveness of different sentence structures in constraining the production of…

To determine whether poor readers employ less efficient strategies in processing logical connectives than do good readers, 34 ninth grade students participated in a study. Half of the students were good readers and half were poor readers. An acquisition list consisting of 18 target sentences and 6 fillers was constructed. A list of 42 recognition…

This study questions the developmental nature of the ability to understand syntactic structures. An exploration is made of the possibility of learning more about reading comprehension and readability by examining responses made to sentences described by transformational grammarians as structurally ambiguous. A group of fifth grade students were…

The "levels effect," the finding that the more central to the meaning of a passage an idea is the more likely that idea is to be retained, does not seem to hold for immediate recognition. Therefore, a study was conducted to test a model of information storage that predicted that when surface structure information was preserved in its…

From the perspective of a reading consultant, the processes of thinking and reading apply to efficient learning. Language teachers should know: (1) the difference between surface structure and deep meaning of an utterance, (2) the importance of "affect" on learning: the reader's personal involvement with the material and with its presentation,…