This study investigated the premise that disordered temporal order perception in retarded readers can be seen in the serial processing of both nonverbal auditory and visual information, and examined whether such information processing deficits relate to level of reading ability. The adult subjects included 20 in the dyslexic group, 12 in the…

A study examined the effects of an instructional intervention designed to improve high school students' ability to comprehend the gist of biology text materials. Subjects were divided into a strategy group, a read-study group, and a control group. The strategy subjects were given eight days of instruction in a procedure designed to help them…

The story comprehension patterns of 21 good and poor sixth grade readers were examined across four modality combinations for input and output: (1) listening and oral recall, (2) reading and recall, (3) listening and written recall, and (4) reading and written recall. The subjects were asked to summarize important information in a different short…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on students' thinking regarding their views on gravity. Students (N=42) were…

The naive conceptions that children develop tacitly or explicitly, outside the classroom, contribute to their interpretation of the teacher's words, paragraphs in a book, or the results of an experiment. These conceptions (or "alternative frameworks") may persist even in the face of systematic teaching of competing scientific concepts…

A study examined variables that affect the acquisition of automaticity of verbal skills. Among the variables examined were practice, novelty or familiarity of a word or word category, the speed and efficiency with which persons acquire automaticity, reaction time, and number of tasks performed concurrently. Subjects, 30 sixth and seventh grade…

Sixty children, 20 from each of grades 1, 3, and 5 served as subjects in a study that examined how elementary school age children realize the intent of directives embedded within written and picture book narratives. Directives were defined as the range of language forms used to direct actions (imperative statement, need/want statement, permission…

Noting that both the structural characteristics of television and the characteristics of the viewer may influence comprehension of television news, a study tested the hypothesis that the synchronous presentation of television news will maximize learning for viewers with low prior knowledge of program content. Synchronous and nonsynchronous…

Analysis of 165 studies (representing the testing of 1,418,899 subjects) that reported data on gender differences in verbal ability indicated a slight female superiority in performance. The difference is so small that it appears that gender differences in verbal ability no longer exist. A major goal was also to define age trends in the pattern of…

The Learning in Science Project identified the learner as the key perspective for in-depth study into problems and difficulties in the teaching and learning of science at the 10- to 14-year-old level. Two complementary research foci were established to explore this viewpoint: (1) interviewing children using strategies designed to establish various…

More than 1,000 studies of reading research published between July 1, 1982, and June 30, 1983 are summarized in this report. The studies are arranged into six categories: (1) Summaries of Reading Research, (2) Teacher Preparation and Practice, (3) The Sociolgy of Reading, (4) Physiology and Psychology of Reading, (5) The Teaching of Reading, and…

A study examined acquisition of new vocabulary through oral stories in first-, third-, and fifth-grade children. Each subject heard four stories, each including four nonsense words repeated three times. These novel words represented common nouns whose meanings could be derived from propositional information associated with their occurrence. The…

Focusing on the social nature of reading instruction provides another direction to research and study that both differs from and adds to cognitive research. H. Mehan's theory of social constructivism emphasizes that the development of cognitive processes occurs within the individual through the internalization of interactions between learners and…

Recent research has shown that when individuals hear an impoverished, atypical, or disorganized story and are asked to recall it, they can and do produce a canonical version of it. To determine if this "strategic" manipulation of story structure undergoes developmental changes, two experiments were conducted using second and sixth grade children…

The 594 studies referenced in this volume, the first of a two-volume set, synthesize reading comprehension research conducted from 1974 to 1984. The 12 chapters cover the following topics: (1) the necessity for both quantitative and qualitative meta-analysis for a complete state-of-the-art understanding of any domain, (2) the background of the…