Explicates a definition and theory of "aboutness" and aboutness analysis developed by text linguist van Dijk; explores implications of text linguistics for bibliographic classification theory; suggests the elements that a theory of the cognitive process of classifying documents needs to encompass; and delineates how people identify…

A model of generative learning suggests teachers must be aware that students learn what they construct from teaching, not necessarily what teachers are teaching. The study of student thought processes upon a base of neural, cognitive and educational research leads to improved instruction and furthers the goal of universal education. (MT)

Five studies were carried out to analyze role of short-term storage in reading of organized text. By interrupting the subject's reading with a distractor task, information that was being carried in short-term storage was removed. It was found that this interruption effect could be countered by giving the subject the last one or two sentences that…

Recent developments in cognitive science are assessed as challenge to well established view in philosophy of linguistics that meaning is inherent to language and is relatively fixed. Information provided by words and sentences, language comprehension, constructions of interpretations (not meanings), and arguments against relativism are discussed.…

Calls into question the assumptions (1) that those who read unfamiliar text use analytic processing more than do those who read familiar text and (2) that introspective reporting interferes with comprehension. (FL)

Reports on a study that investigated the effect of readers' abilities to be creative on their abilities to make inferences in reading prose passages. (FL)

Concludes that (1) knowing whether we comprehend as we read is indispensible to the process of understanding itself; and (2) without self-monitoring, there can be little textbook learning and even less hope for informed participation in democracy. (FL)

Reviews recent ERIC materials on comprehension monitoring. (FL)

Mature reading is a process based on semantic and syntactic clues that enable the reader to resolve ambiguities and correctly comprehend the material. (MF)

Findings indicate that, when skimming, readers find it difficult to perceptually select from a passage information that is relevant to their goal in skimming. There was a reaction time advantage for verification of gist-relevant information as opposed to details, which tended to increase with reading rate. (Author/PN)

Perceptual processes of reading can be investigated meaningfully without having to make detailed statements about higher-level processing and about the nature of the interactions between downward flowing cognitive information and upward flowing information resulting from visual processing. (HOD)

An attempt is made to manipulate depth of processing by inserting in text verbatim, paraphrase, or inference questions after every paragraph of the passage. Findings are discussed in terms of a "levels of processing" analysis. (Author/GK)

Context orientation and depth of processing were tested as possible explanations for thematic organization. The process of searching for the theme of prose passages was detrimental to recall. Theme statements facilitated recall when provided prior to each passage. The theme search process was beneficial only when the correct theme was identified.…

Explores children's predicting and inferencing strategies for understanding written materials by analyzing an example of one second grader's oral reading. Discusses theory of reading comprehension processes, as well as how teachers can develop student's predicting and inferencing abilities at word, sentence and suprasentential levels. (RH)

Demonstrates that (1) in a theory of comprehension, global coherence must refer not just to the availability of a macrostructure, but also to its ease of construction; and (2) the topic-comment assignment at the sentence level can be an important influence on the reader's perception of the passage topic. (FL)