Presents a strategy that helps poor readers overcome some of the problems they have with reasoning. The strategy offers students a way of hypothesizing answers to inferential questions and checking their answers. (FL)

The question of what constitutes a minimal appropriate context for understanding a metaphor is examined through the relative effectiveness of three types of contextual priming for metaphor comprehension. All three produced immediate and automatic metaphor comprehension. The use of context to disambiguate both literal and nonliteral speech messages…

Describes the four steps of critical reading adapted to the model of reading proposed by W. S. Gray: (1) the perception of the connotative power of words, (2) the comprehension of persuasive language, (3) the reaction of judgment, and (4) the integration of monitoring devices. (FL)

Kindergarten students (n=102) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions (play, puppet, picture, repetition-control) to examine the effects of play as a mediator of listening comprehension. The play condition gained more than all other conditions and all conditions gained more than the control condition. (Author/PN)

Adaptations of simultaneous and successive processing and language tests were administered to 88 institutionalized moderately mentally retarded adolescents and adults. Results revealed a relationship between language and coding processing and demonstrated the involvement of serial processing in the comprehension of speech flow and language…

Reviews the work of Yale computer scientist Roger C. Schank in the area of reading instruction and offers five reasons why his model of computer reading should not be applied to the reading processes of children. (FL)

Discusses previous articles in this journal issue and addresses issues concerning the acquisition of specific social knowledge. (FL)

Suggests that chunking might improve the reading comprehension of good as well as poor readers. (FL)

Investigated seven eight-year-old children's memory for aurally presented sentences. Used a recognition-memory task to probe constructive memory processes in two groups differentiated by reading comprehension. Results indicated the tendency to construct meanings was greater in children who scored higher on reading comprehension. (Author)

Reviews the problems posed by atheoretical approaches to research and the benefits of employing theory in conducting research in active response modes. (HOD)

Describes the development of an index to measure elementary school children's comprehension of humor. (FL)

Three classes of research on reading are identified. The articles of this section pertain to investigation of the organization and operation of basic processing mechanisms underlying skilled reading; each is described briefly and commented upon. Particular attention is devoted to the articles on context effects. (Author/RD)

To support the view of readability as an interaction between a text and the reader's prose-processing capabilities, this article applies an extended and formalized version of the Kintch and van Dijk prose-processing model to 20 texts of varying readability. (Author/GSK)

The relevance of psycholinguistics to reading is based on the premise that reading is the act of constructing meaning, first, foremost, and always. (MKM)

Reveals that (1) structural importance and not serial position was the better guide to recall, (2) children were able to sequence properly with few idiosyncratic interferences, and (3) younger children recalled main events, as well as did older children--improved recall with age was primarily for filler events. (FL)