Investigates the effectiveness of explicit instruction in think aloud as a means to promote elementary students' comprehension monitoring abilities. Concludes that both think-aloud (TA) and a directed reading-thinking activity (DRTA) strategies are effective but that additional research is needed to determine their relative effectiveness. (SR)

Examines the effects of reading comprehension ability and the presence of explicit or implicit causal relationships upon recall of propositional content and comprehension of interpropositional relationships. Finds that, in the late elementary grades, better readers begin to develop a strategy for the processing of written text which involves…

Investigates the effects of goals and goal progress feedback on reading comprehension self-efficacy and skill. Shows that remedial readers benefit from explicit feedback on their mastery of a comprehension strategy. (MG)

Investigates the effect of informing remedial readers that strategy use (such as looking for the main idea) improves performance on their self-efficacy and comprehension skills. Finds increased self-efficacy and comprehension skills, and suggests that remedial readers need multiple sources of strategy value information. (RS)

Explores the effects of question task conditions on reading comprehension and metacomprehension for proficient readers, disabled readers, and deaf readers. Finds several significant interaction effects for both demonstrated and perceived comprehension performance in selected-response and constructed-response question tasks under both lookback and…

Examines children's comprehension and learning of expository texts on micro-, local-, and global-level processing skills. Finds a gradual increase in higher level processing skills with age. Notes that critical developmental patterns from nine-year olds onward took place in local- and global-level processing. Finds that developmental patterns were…

Examines proficient and less proficient high school comprehenders' use of strategies as they read three passages with different top-level structures: collection, causation, and comparison. Finds that both groups of readers use similar strategies. Finds that proficient comprehenders use more previous knowledge on the collection passage and more…

Examines students' perceptions of themselves as readers, their reading difficulties, and the strategies they use to solve reading problems. Suggests that poor readers in the elementary grades, especially those with word recognition problems, experience difficulties because they lack knowledge about when and why a particular strategy is effective.…

Investigates the relationship between the relative difficulty of passages and the number of unknown words in passages. Finds little support for the theory that free reading results in large vocabulary growth. Calls into question the practice of devoting large amounts of classroom time to free reading if the purpose is to increase vocabulary or…

Uses videotapes of children reading stories to examine good and poor readers' comprehension evaluation and regulation while reading inconsistent stories. Finds good readers are more likely to look back at inconsistencies during reading, to give accurate verbal reports of passage inconsistency following reading, and to recall text inconsistencies.…

Describes several studies examining how children become skilled at processing graphic cues. Reports that prereaders do not acquire graphic skills by learning to read signs and labels in their environment. Concludes that mastery of letters is required for processing graphic cues. (MM)

Reviews research in revising instructional text by examining multidisciplinary research in readability, text structure, text interestingness, expert revisers' strategies, and readers' comprehension strategies. Finds that much of this research is limited by a simplistic view of reading, the use of experimentally contrived texts and contexts, and a…

Concludes that sixth-grade students taught with methods that used a structured overview to activate background knowledge, the cloze procedure to develop an inferential thinking strategy, and a self-monitoring checklist to maintain the strategy increased their inferential comprehension skills as measured by both immediate and delayed transfer…

Examines the effects of a 10-week program designed to heighten fifth- and eighth-grade students' awareness of information explicitly stated in text, implied by text, and found only in the individual's knowledge base. (FL)

Examines the influence of prior knowledge and text genre on prediction strategies of eleventh grade and graduate student readers. Finds that readers' prior knowledge may significantly influence the nature of readers' prediction strategies. Uses qualitative analysis of verbal report data to examine variation in types of prediction strategies.…