Four experiments examined the effect of input sequence on memory for simple stories. After reading stories written in either chronological or flashback sequence, subjects made a decision about the underlying order of occurrence of two events. Responses were consistently faster and more accurate on chronological sequences under three conditions of…

A component skills model of reading is presented. On the basis of the model, five component factors are hypothesized: grapheme encoding, encoding multiletter units, phonemic translation, automaticity of articulation, and depth of processing in word recognition. The fit of the hypothesized component factor model is tested using covariance data for…

This study examines recall of narrative prose for evidence of underlying structures such as the grammar used in the story's sentence structure. Subjects listened to repeated presentations of a tape recording of two pages from a history book, with verbals collected after each presentation. The subjects used in this experiment were 13 undergraduate…

This paper presents a means of evaluating answers to comprehension questions by analyzing the oral language used in the answers to the questions according to the average number of words per communication unit, a measure of linguistic and cognitive growth, in order to determine the effectiveness of comprehension questions asked at two cognitive…

Thematization, the relative frequency of a discourse referent, and topicalization are conceptualized as related discourse functions. In a probe recall experiment, a word with a thematized referent was a better recall probe than a word with a nonthematized referent. Also, an agent noun was a better prompt than a recipient, and this semantic…

This study examined children's preferences for three qualitative levels of thinking--abstract, functional, and concrete--in vocabulary. It was hypothesized that whereas older, more mature readers would choose abstract meaning, younger readers would choose concrete meaning regardless of the nature of the material, and also that a dominant cognitive…

The acquisition of thinking skills is being stressed today by educators in all fields. There are, however, no clear and concise concepts of the different faces of comprehension which deal with higher mental processes. If the thinking skills are to be implemented, certain objectives must first be met: more research must be conducted in regard to…

To explore the possibility that the tendency to cluster during free recall reflects organizational processes that are central to the attainment of certain reading skills, 32 mentally handicapped subjects were asked to recall 20 words from four conceptual categories on four consecutive trials. For one group the words were presented in random order…

This book is a compilation of selected papers on comprehension and critical reading that have appeared in the annual "Proceedings in Invitational Addresses, 1965," or have been published in the journals of the International Reading Association. The articles have been grouped under several headings: (1) the nature of comprehension in reading; (2)…

Reading comprehension questions selected from readers, teacher manuals, and workbooks of three current, widely used and representative basal reading series were analyzed according to the Barrett Taxonomy to determine cognitive objectives. The taxonomy has five major divisions and thirty-three levels within, claimed to be cumulative and sequenced…

Consistent learning gains are associated with the use of pictures when experiments adhere to five ground rules: (1) prose passages are presented orally; (2) the subjects are children; (3) the passages are fictional narratives; (4) the pictures overlap the story content; and (5) learning is demonstrated by factual recall. (Author)

Reports on research concerning cloze techniques; shows how a technique termed the "Interactive Cloze Procedure" was used to help eighth grade students study the use of imagery in a literary selection. (MAI)

Conventional paragraph structure requires that the topic sentence be presented first, followed by connected, coherent sentences. The processing role of these rules was investigated by comparing performance on reading simple passages that conformed to or violated conventional paragraph organization. (Author/SW)

In a study, Tagalog-speaking children, 3-, 5-, and 7-year olds, demonstrated better mastery of patient-focus (passive) than agent-focus (active) sentence structure. These results were attributed to the children's strategy of interpreting the first noun of a sentence to be the agent of the action. (SW)

Two studies investigated an information processing model in explaining the poor academic performance of highly test-anxious students. The first measured the organization of course material by students in a nonevaluative situation; and the second differentiated types of highly test anxious students by their information processing skills.…