The purpose of this discussion is to identify and to describe current models of reading comprehension in order to draw conclusions regarding their application to classroom teaching. The models are categorized according to the different approaches to comprehension: "Behavior Models" are concerned with determining behavioral outcomes for teaching…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of adjunct objectives (AO) or adjunct rules (AR) on instructional materials. The subjects were 110 undergraduate volunteers attending Arizona State University. As each subject entered the lecture hall for the class, he was given an envelope containing the experimental materials appropriate to a…

When one learns complex material, the important thing appears to be the ability to understand the material. Once understanding occurs, learning and remembering follow automatically. The conventional psychological literature says little about the processes involved in the learning of complex material--material that takes weeks, months, and even…

This book presents a description of a new theory of memory which departs from existing concepts. It integrates and explains in detail the recent research findings in sentence memory, language comprehension, search on long term memory, verbal learning, and forgetting and imagery. It also reports new experiments which clarify these issues. A major…

Critical reading is a continuous process, only beginning in the first grade, which necessitates carefully planned training by qualified teachers. By building upon the student's competence in literal reading, interpretation, evaluation, integration of facts, accurate recall, and reorganization of materials, the teacher can develop the student's…

Two experiments examined the comprehension of singly and multiply negated sentences. Difficulty of comprehension was measured by the speed and accuracy with which subjects judged the semantic reasonableness of sentences. Marked and negatively prefixed adjectives were a particular focus of the study. (Author/RM)

Working from theories of text grammar and logic, the authors suggest and tentatively confirm several hypotheses concerning the role of micro- and macro-structures in comprehension and recall of texts. (Text is in French.) (DB)

An experiment is reported which shows that with identical preceding context, the same initial phoneme targets contained in high transitional probability words were responded to significantly faster than those in low transitional probability words. The result argues for the importance of transitional probability as an independent variable in…

The effects of differential teacher questioning strategies on reading comprehension were studied in 75 secondary-level educable mentally handicapped students. (DLS)

Presents a study of comprehension as a function of the stimulation-seeking motive in relation to the degree of structure involved in information presented in film. The study indicates possible differential-encoding or information processing strategies between individuals, both high and low in the stimulation-seeking motive. (Author/JEG)

To determine whether the connectedness of prose passages had any effect on the behavior of readers who searched for information in the passages, the behavior of readers who saw the normal arrangement of a passage was contrasted with the behavior of readers who saw the random arrangement of the passage. (HOD)

A study of the effect of lexical items within first sentences which affect reading expectations for the remainder of the passage, and of the effects of violation of reader expectation following first sentences, showed poorer performance by low achievers on the "violating" passage and a performance increase with familiar content regardless of a…

Two experiments examined the roles of semantic and surface information in reading and recognizing sentences. Results indicate that reading and recognition are interactive processes, involving conceptually driven and data driven operations; the interaction may be either automatic or controlled. Semantic and surface information are conceptualized as…

The author discusses the processes by which children learn to read and how the natural sequence of learning may be used to improve reading instruction. (JD)

Describes a self-instructional photo-study learning center on comprehension skills for remedial readers. (MKM)