Eighty-eight college students were invited to cook a chocolate mousse and were allowed first to ask any question that seemed helpful to completing the task. The questions were answered immediately according to a predetermined schema: in one condition the subjects were told that the task would be rather easy, in the other condition they were told…

Based on an extensive review of literature on the depth of comprehension approach, a study was conducted to induce various degrees of depth of processing at the semantic inferential level through orientation tasks. It was hypothesized that the most superficial reading would occur for "error correction" and the deepest reading would be done for…

The hypothesis that pragmatic inferences presented in text are taken for granted, superficially processed, and not stably or enduringly represented in memory was investigated. Stories were read which in some conditions contained information vitiating the implicational force of explicit inferences. The vitiating information was presented either…

Since not everything that is understood is remembered and not everything that is remembered is understood, models of language processing should be able to make a distinction between comprehension and memory. To this end, a case is made for a spreading activation process as being the essential ingredient of the comprehension process. Concepts…

Written responses to comprehension exercises related to basal reading materials were collected from 23 first graders and rated on a scale extending from no comprehension to application or extension of information beyond the story. Results indicated that most first graders in the group were able to answer detail questions but were unable to…

Two studies investigated the processing of metaphor, specifically (1) the extent to which metaphor is processed similarly to literal language and (2) the effects of the presence or absence of a specific context on processing. In the first study, 82 college students listened to one of four taped lectures, each containing 22 metaphors. The tapes…

Background knowledge and experience individuals bring to an activity influence the degree of meaning derived from it. This paper focuses on children's knowledge and text comprehension as it explores the nature of the relationship between them. Studies with children between the ages of five and twelve were undertaken to examine the effect of…

Designed to provide an exchange of ideas about children's reading comprehension, this book has gathered insights and perspectives from both educators and psychologists concerning the comprehension process. The first section of the book consists of three chapters devoted to literature reviews, each dealing with an aspect of comprehension. Specific…

Based upon a theory of intelligence proposed by Alfred Binet, this paper describes a cognitive process approach to poetry instruction. After discussing the suitability of the study of poetry as a means of enhancing students' reading comprehension, the paper summarizes Binet's theory, which distinguishes four successive intellectual operations: (1)…

The schema theory of reading comprehension holds that an active interplay exists between the reader's cognitive structures (schemata) relevant to a text and the text itself. A study examined whether children varying in reading comprehension ability showed differences in the deployment of cognitive structures--specifically, whether good and poor…

A reader's background knowledge (schemata) and purpose for reading have an overriding influence upon the reader's development of meaning. Reading comprehension also involves activating, focusing, maintaining, and refining ideas toward developing interpretations that are plausible, cohesive, and complete. Recent examinations of instructional…

It is necessary to provide a comprehensive program of visual literacy skill development to provide a firm foundation for reading comprehension. A taxonomy of visual literacy can suggest an outline for such a program. Once the student has been made aware of the desired thought processes in familiar contexts, it is then appropriate to guide the…

A reader's ability to recognize an author's top-level structure in a passage is a useful strategy for organizing textual information for memory purposes. Even without specialized training, many adults and some fifth grade children have this ability. Other children in fifth and ninth grades, and in classes for the mildly mentally handicapped, have…

A study examined the main and interacting effects of pragmatic, structural, and word-level manipulations of text on comprehension and compared the results to the effects of these variables on judgments of text comprehensibility and interest. Subjects were 120 seventh grade students who read a number of passages that differed in level of…