A study tested the theory that an item that stands out from its background is better remembered than one that is similar to the background (the isolation effect). Specifically, the study examined whether the isolation effect would be greater when there was a larger and more confusing mass of background items, whether position of the isolated item…

Three experiments used "rhyme priming," a methodology in which lexical decisions to a visually presented word are facilitated when the word is preceded by a rhyming word, to investigate the access and maintenance of speech-based codes in sentence comprehension. In these experiments, the pairs were visually dissimilar rhymes, such as…

Twelve fifth and sixth grade students were located who had much greater difficulty understanding "inductively structured" paragraphs (with the main idea near the end) than understanding "deductively structured" paragraphs (with the main idea near the beginning). Compared to other students of equal overall reading ability, these…

The reader-centered emphasis dominating the current literature reflects an assumption that what is learned from text, and how much is learned, is determined primarily by the reader. An alternative thesis, however, is that much of the responsibility for text comprehensibility may lie with the producer of the text. That is, the text needs to be…

In a recent note, Catlin and Jones (1976) argued that the sentence picture comparison model of Carpenter and Just (1975) could not account for the results obtained in studies where the picture preceded the sentence. In the present note, it is argued that the model can handle the results without adding additional parameters and that the Carpenter…

Reading researchers and theorists are sharply divided as to how meaning is obtained from the printed word. Three current explanations are that (1) meaning is accessed directly, without any intermediate processes; (2) meaning is accessed only through an intermediate phonemic stage; and (3) both direct access and phonemic mediation can occur. To…

A study tested the assumption found in schema theory that scripted knowledge automatically provides specific content details about scripted activity, thereby biasing a reader's immediate interpretation of a text. The study measured how quickly and accurately 16 college students could verify script related words. Subjects listened to four scripted…

Reading comprehension includes both how much a reader remembers and how well the reader understands what has been read. It is dependent upon processing meaning. A model for how this is done includes three steps: identifying important elements of the text, constructing representations of important text information, and matching the representations…

To conceptualize a reader's comprehension of text as a semantic and interpretive processing of information, it is necessary to take note of interactions among persons and texts and conditions under which the texts are to be comprehended. A Computer-Assisted Language Analysis System (CALAS) was constructed which focuses on the text as any…

Three experiments were conducted to determine how children assign meaning to a multiple-meaning word in a sentence context. Fourth-grade children were given sentences in which a key word carried a meaning other than its "primary," or most familiar, meaning. Two types of multiple choice questions could then follow: in the first type, the secondary,…

Thirty-six fourth grade pupils were grouped according to reading ability in a study conducted to examine comprehension within the framework of event perception. The children were presented a sequential activity described in picture or text form and then were asked to indicate on scoring sheets which of eight test items logically fit with the event…

Rigorously articulated conversational studies (based on George Kelly's personal construct theory) of the reading of complete texts raise new questions about the cognitive processes by which meaning is attributed to the printed word. Four generative models are examined: probabilistic, phrase structure, transformational, and semantic. No single…

This study of the reading process was written by a librarian for other librarians in order to explore what happens as the end result of the librarian's job, the meeting of a person and a book. A model of the reading act is constructed which makes the reader the subject rather than the receiver, as in the communications model of "transmitter…

Subjects named pictures on which words or nonwords were superimposed as distractors in this study designed to test whether the meaning of printed words is perceived directly or by means of phonetic recoding. (HOD)

School age children and adults read short paragraphs suggesting spatial relationships and were given a recognition test containing items congruent with the semantic content of the test. Subjects recognized the semantically congruent inferences as having been present in the original reading material. (AA)