The purposes of this study were to replicate the effects of question placement, either before or after, on the acquisition of critical and incidental material with grade school subjects and to determine the effects of paragraph length on learning with children. Two variables, question placement (BA) and pacing (PL), were combined in a 2 x 4…

A course that capitalizes on individual and group experiences and encourages students to expand their powers of observation and discernment is presented in the course, students analyzing their thoughts and translate them into written responses. The performance objectives are: A. Given opportunities to experience sensory and emotional stimuli,…

In this study comprehension of sentences describing two events occurring simultaneously or in sequence was assessed in 5-, 7- and 9-year-old children. The sentences were at three different levels of linguistic complexity, differing only in whether simultaneity or sequentiality was described. Subjects were kindergarten, second, and fourth grade…

Evaluates junior high students' understanding of certain aspects of the particle model of matter using a Piaget-type interview. Approximately 70 students from grades seven, eight, and nine in several midwestern schools in the U.S. were interviewed. (HM)

Reviews research relevant to understanding the conditions in which elaborative inferences are made, with a particular concern for the implications for schema-theoretic notions of comprehension. (FL)

Focuses on the underlying elements in the reading comprehension process that better distinguish its developmental phases. Offers suggestions for the acquisition of strategies pertaining to textual organization that, together with proposed activities for comprehension, contribute to the formation and consolidation of reading habits. Includes…

Reviews the literature relevant to the subject of comprehension monitoring and offers ideas from the reading research for how students can improve their comprehension and how teachers can tell if students understand what they read. (JC)

Describes pilot study in a high school which assessed the qualitative and quantitative changes which occurred in two severely disabled readers' cognitive processes during strategy training. Results suggested that a qualitative shift in verbal strategy reports occurred during prose recall. Introduction of cognitive training increased recall of…

Two experiments employed story telling to investigate whether production is adapted to comprehension. Subjects were more likely to specify instruments from stories if the instruments were atypical or important to the story. A mathematical model proposed that instrument concepts may be selected at three stages in the production process. (Author/LMO)

Indicates that adding large amounts of supportive information to basal reader stories increased children's story understanding and enhanced their interest in the stories, but had no effect on reading rate or the amount of important information included in story retellings. (FL)

Examines the relations among general language competency factors such as word knowledge, comprehension, and paradigmatic/syntagmatic reasoning, and college developmental readers' ability to interpret two text formats designed to elicit either a literal or figurative interpretation. (DF)

Discusses cognitive processes readers engage in when comprehending instructional text and identifies familiar devices utilized by authors of instructional materials to support each of these processes. Included are appropriate vocabulary and sentence syntax use for intended audience; listing instructional objectives; and use of hierarchical…

Analyzes the research on how readers use text patterns to understand writing and identifies five text patterns found in both school texts and work texts. (HOD)

Discusses details for establishing and evaluating student directed reading groups. (HOD)

Concludes that sixth-grade students taught with methods that used a structured overview to activate background knowledge, the cloze procedure to develop an inferential thinking strategy, and a self-monitoring checklist to maintain the strategy increased their inferential comprehension skills as measured by both immediate and delayed transfer…