Three experimental tasks were devised to assess the nature of memory processing limitations in fourth-graders' oral reading comprehension. (Author/MP)

Reports on a study that examined the effects of decentration training upon second-grade children's responses to reading instruction. Concludes that those who learned to decentrate did better on postinstruction comprehension tests than those who did not learn the technique. (FL)

Programing for learning disabled students with comprehension problems is discussed with an emphasis on the interaction of physical, psychological, and social elements in the children's lives. Attention is also directed to instructional materials, the child's home life, and the needs of parents. (SEW)

Examines research on teacher effectiveness and comprehension instructional strategies and proposes six principles for the development of reading comprehension instructional methods and materials. (FL)

Proposes a model of word identification and tests it by examining the influence of orthographic redundancy, versatility, and letter-sound correspondences on the identification of both high- and low-frequency words by children and adults. (FL)

Proposes adapting holistic scoring to oral retellings of stories as a means of developing students' concepts of interrelationships and their higher levels of comprehension. (FL)

Concludes that skilled adult readers may use the meanings of words ahead of fixation to enrich their interpretation of a text or use those words more simply as markers to guide further eye movements to the location of the next useful fixation. (FL)

Reviews findings of recent television research and discusses two dominant issues: the nature and determinants of children's attention to television, and the amount and kind of content retained by different age groups. It is recommended that research on media effects incorporate age-related and individual difference factors. Nineteen references are…

A study attempted to identify those performance-related factors that were responsible for subjects' errors on one measure of functional literacy. The analysis of errors revealed that the majority of errors could be explained in terms of information processing failures. (MKM)

Investigates differences between adolescents and older adults in their explanations of linguistic metaphors. Adults displayed a synthesizing, integrative perspective, while adolescents displayed an analytic perspective in their explanation of metaphors. (Author/SS)

The comprehension of sentences with "because" or "if" was investigated in children aged 2, 9-11, and 11. (Author/MP)

Describes a question-answering procedure for probing the reader's internal representation of prose. Examines two dimensions of a reader's conceptual organization of plot: hierarchical level and relational density of propositions. (PMJ)

Sentences were constructed in which the terms "before" and "after" were embedded in logically constrained and logically reversible sequences. The preschool children in the study found the constrained sentences easier to comprehend. (Author/CFM)

Moderately mentally retarded children can acquire the necessary basic mental operations through a proper progression of mediated learning experiences; once the basic mental operations have been acquired, complex learning can occur because the necessary cognitive tools are present. (JD)