Presents results of a study comparing standard automobile insurance policies which are difficult to understand with passages from new readable insurance policies, using the cloze procedure with 150 college and high school students in three reading-ability groups. (JM)

Reports on a study stemming from schema theory that assessed the role that background knowledge plays in determining young children's ability to process relationships that are explicitly and fully specified in a text, in comparison to those that are only partially specified by the same text. (Author/HOD)

Examines cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational factors as predictors of individual differences in the reading comprehension abilities of good and poor readers. Finds that regression analyses within subgroups indicated word recognition was the most important predictor variable for poor readers, whereas perceived competence predicted the…