Structural equation modeling procedures are applied to the standardization sample of the Woodcock-Johnson III to simultaneously estimate the effects of a psychometric general factor (g), specific cognitive abilities, and reading skills on reading achievement. The results of this study indicate that g has a strong direct relationship with basic…

The propositions and inferences in a narrative story can be classified into two sets: the structurally explicit are those concerned with the central theme or structure of the story, and the incidentally explicit deal with information peripheral to this theme. This study compared readers and listeners from grades three and five in their…

The testing of a number of hypotheses about the effect of hearing a prior context sentence on immediate processing of a subsequent target sentence is described. According to the standard deep structure model, higher level processing (e.g. semantic interpretation, integration of context-tarqet information) does not occur immediately as speech is…

The purpose of this study was to enumerate, categorize, and compare the types of reading comprehension questions and activities included in the manuals of selected basal reading series. The Barrett Taxonomy--Cognitive and Affective Dimensions of Reading Comprehension was selected as the categorization taxonomy. Basal series were classified as…

Recent research has shown that effective second-language reading involves an interaction of the reader with the text. This interactive view has relevance for other areas of second-language processing, including listening comprehension, writing, and English for special purposes. Future research is needed in metacognition, relationships among…

The functional architecture of the verbal processing resource system was studied by testing aphasic patients in Canada and Boston for their abilities to use syntactic structure in sentence comprehension in isolation and under dual-task conditions. Results indicate that the processing resource system underlying syntactic processing is separate from…

Reading difficulties and disabilities present serious and potentially lifelong challenges. Children who do not read well are more likely to be retained a grade in school, drop out of high school, become a teen parent, or enter the juvenile justice system. Building on the extant research and seminal studies, including the National Reading Panel and…

This study aimed at investigating the actual strategic behaviors of high and low achievers in reading comprehension and their relation with respective performance. The participants were 45 individually examined third graders, 20 high and 25 low reading comprehension achievers. Cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational aspects of the participants'…

Background: The purpose of the study was to describe sensorimotor profile in children with mild intellectual disability (ID), and to examine the association between cognitive and motor function. Methods: A total of 233 children with mild ID aged 7 to 8 years were evaluated with measures of cognitive, motor and sensory integrative functioning.…

This paper provides an explanation for the nonspecificity of emotion inferences found in previous research [e.g., Language and Cognitive Processes, 19(5), 613-638, 2004]. We first demonstrate that behavioral components of emotions, as opposed to emotions per se, are better markers of readers' mental representations of the main character's…

Children with mental retardation have pronounced difficulties in using cognitive strategies and comprehending abstract concepts--among them, the concept of sequential time (Van-Handel, Swaab, De-Vries, & Jongmans, 2007). The perception of sequential time is generally tested by using scenarios presenting a continuum of actions. The goal of this…

The rapid and accelerating pace of change in physiology and cell biology, along with the easy access to huge amounts of content, have altered the playing field for science students, yet most students are still mainly taught from textbooks. Of necessity, textbooks are usually broad in scope, cover topics much more superficially than do journal…

A study examined the ability of 16 children in kindergarten, grade 2, and grade 4 to draw inferences based on the content of a narrative passage and to recognize inferences as derived from, rather than given by, text. An inference task, developed to assess the ability to make and recognize appropriate inferences, consisted of four orally presented…

Three empirical studies were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that the "easy to see" construction (such as in the sentence "children are hard to understand") is acquired at a younger age than the 7-9 year range reported by previous studies (Cambon and Sinclair, 1974; Chomsky, 1969; 1972; Cromer, 1970; Kessel, 1970).…

Describes a lexical training program developed to teach object, visible movement, and invisible movement words to children at stage 5 (N=7) and stage 6 (N=16) object permanence development. Stage 6 children learned all three types of words equally well, while stage 5 children learned object and visible movement but not invisible movement words.…