Readers as well as writers compose meaning. Using the same characteristics essential to effective writing--planning, drafting, aligning, revising, and monitoring--readers react creatively with the text. In response to the author's intention and their own knowledge base, they decide what they want to get from their reading. Constantly renegotiating…

The comprehension of instructional text can be a cognitively demanding task because component comprehension processes compete for limited space within the readers' working memories. The component comprehension processes that readers must perform include recognizing words and retrieving their meanings, parsing sentences, identifying and organizing…

A study investigated the relationship between reading achievement and predictive abilities for narrative text structure of 96 fourth grade and 70 sixth grade readers. The subjects (1) silently read incomplete stories and then told the rest orally, and (2) silently read stories that had parts deleted and then orally gave information they thought…

A study examined the relative merits of characteristics of general modeling when applied to cognitive modeling of reading comprehension processes and whether the characteristics of modeling, when applied to cognitive modeling of reading processes, influence comprehension and comprehension monitoring. Subjects, 100 eighth grade students who could…

In the hope of filling in a missing link for experimental psychologists' research on reading, this paper provides a general review of research on the issue of orthography and its relation to reading. The traditional classification of logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic modes are examined to see how much orthographic variations affect the…

Fundamental to any critical reading process is the ability of the child to recognize and identify assumptions concerning the world in which he or she lives and brings to the printed page. The unconscious and implicit understandings that a reader and an author hold can fill the slots of developing schemata and become embedded and subsumed in…

Students must develop self-monitoring abilities if they are to successfully transfer knowledge and strategies they are taught to their own reading. But first, teachers must know just what this knowledge and these strategies are and how they can be presented to students. Akin to model building, reading comprehension involves a variety of behaviors…

As individuals read, they construct meaning at various levels, including literal, interpretive, and critical. One part of this comprehension act is creative reading, which may be promoted by self-questioning so that students become personally involved in the material they read. To guide students' self-questioning strategies, teachers can both pose…

Two studies were conducted to compare subjects' performance reading texts displayed on a computer terminal screen and on paper. In the first study, 10 graduate students read a 1,000-word article on knee injuries from "Science 83" magazine and were tested for recall of information on eight items. While subjects in the control condition…

A study was conducted to test the findings of two earlier studies (Peeck l974 and Pressley l983) on the effects of occasional mismatches between verbal and pictorial content in children's retention of illustrated prose. While the Peeck study indicated a considerable impact of mismatched pictures, the Pressley study indicated that with some…

This paper presents an extensive, critical review of Eleanor Gibson and Harry Levin's "The Psychology of Reading." Treating the book as an attempt at comprehensive integration of the literature on the reading process, the reviewers look for a theoretical account that will bind findings together, for a critical examination of the research…

This paper develops the thesis that the knowledge a person possesses has a potent influence on what he or she will learn and remember from exposure to discourse. After outlining some assumptions about the characteristics of the structures (schemata) in which existing knowledge is packaged, a theory of the processes involved in assimilating the…

A cognitive approach to the interrelation of writing and reading assumes that production and comprehension of written text depend upon cognitive and affective schemata used in concert by a writer or reader to produce or encode, store, and retrieve text information. Both comprehending and composing are basic, complex, interactive processes with…

A study was undertaken to determine if a criterion referenced test based on a Piagetian stage model of reading acquisition was related to grade level, to a standardized reading achievement test, and to a test of cognitive developmental level. Sixty first, second, and third grade children were administered a comprehensive test of basic skills. They…

The focus of this paper is on how bilingual children may benefit through a reading method that allows them opportunities to perceive and conceptualize aspects of the English language using a Piagetian model. The paper presents the analysis and prevention methods used for correcting difficulties encountered by bilingual students, and argues that…