The effects of prereading techniques, specifically "advance organizers" and "structured overview" were studied by comparing retention and comprehension of reading material in high school students with and without prereading treatment. An advance organizer is a brief passage giving a general and inclusive introduction to material to be read. A…

This is a survey of techniques that have been used to test language comprehension. The study of research completed in this field points up the fact that there is no single technique that universally gives valid and reliable information. Various definitions of language comprehension are examined with special emphasis placed on implications for the…

Reports on a study showing that teachers' understanding of learning and the age of children affect children's comprehension styles. (EL)

Argues that children need to be taught how to extract, synthesize, organize, and integrate important information from texts into their own knowledge structures and describes some techniques that can be used to activate prior knowledge. (HOD)

Offers examples of lessons in conflict in reading material that can lead students to read critically, to seek further reading, and to enhance their comprehension.(HOD)

A correlation exists between verbal ability test scores and name identity minus physical identity reaction times in a letter matching task. The present results support Carroll's (1981) suggestion that the reaction time difference is related more to speed than power component of standardized tests and is not optimum for prediction. (Author/RD)

Compares the performance of Black, Hispanic, and Anglo students on a story unscrambling task to determine if sociocultural differences in story schemata affect reading comprehension. Shows some effects suggesting that the three groups have somewhat different strategies for choosing initial and final sentences and for making narratives coherent.…

Data were reanalyzed from a previously reported study of the passage dependence of reading comprehension questions being developed for the revised SAT. The objective was to uncover any gender differences in approaches to and performance on a task requiring examinees to answer reading comprehension questions without reading the passages on which…

Examines the effects of a cloze procedure developed from transfer feature theory of processing in reading on immediate and delayed recall of good and poor readers. (HOD)

Reviews research in which children's processing of individual words is examined in prose context. When taken together, the data suggest that the reader's dependence on contextual constraint for individual word identification decreases with age. (HOD)

Two groups of undergraduates differing in reading ability were tested on a number of reaction-time tasks designed to determine the speed of encoding visual information at several different levels, tests of sensory functions, verbal and quantitative reasoning ability, short-term auditory memory span, and ability to comprehend spoken text.…

A growing body of empirical and theoretical work indicates that young children (grades K-3) have difficulties solving word problems because of deficient language and text comprehension strategies. Describes a computer simulation designed to model working memory demands in "bottom-up" comprehension of arithmetic word problems, offering a…

This review of 20 studies examines 3 predictions concerning the effects of conceptual models on students' understanding of scientific prose: (1) that models improve recall of conceptual information; (2) that they decrease verbatim retention; and (3) that they increase creative solutions on transfer problems. (SLD)

The 11 chapters of this theme issue explore important issues that relate cognitive style to educational concerns. They link cognitive style with reading comprehension, parental teaching, family qualities, teaching, distance learning, strategic learning, socialization, and athletic performance. (SLD)

Proposes that the unique features of electronic text can interact with the special skills, abilities, and diverse experiences of English language learners to help us better understand both the goals, processes, and special characteristics of the bilingual experience and the acquisition of electronic literacy skills. (Contains 29 references.)…