The sentence recall performance of 24 mildly retarded adolescents was poor relative to that of nonretarded children matched for MA. However, both groups found general and particular cues to be equally effective retrieval aids for target sentences. Differential sentence reconstruction and editing strategies were suggested as possible reasons.…

Reviews materials that teachers and students can use to help build knowledge of topics and word meanings that are essential to reading comprehension. (FL)

Argues that basing comprehension questions on story grammar will help students develop story schema. (FL)

Discusses three experiments conducted to determine whether inferences that function so as to preserve the coherence of a passage are drawn in the course of comprehension. (Author/FL)

Compares American middle-class children, as representatives of heavy television viewers, and Israeli middle-class children, as representatives of lighter television viewers, to determine the extent to which accumulated television viewing enhances the development of particular mental skills. (PD)

The purpose of this study was to identify cognitive processing activities that produce text learning in the absence of instructions to learn. (HOD)

Immediate post-testing of high school students after they studied a prose passage improved their memory significantly. (JD)

The effects of verbal and pictorial organizing material on comprehension of paragraphs was investigated with second- and fifth-graders. Results suggest that knowledge of the interrelationships among elements is important, if not essential, for the comprehension of prose material. (Author/RC)

Discusses the relative contribution of several theoretically relevant skills and abilities in accounting for variance in both word reading and text comprehension. Data is presented from two waves of a longitudinal study. Shows there is a dissociation between the skills and abilities that account for variance in word reading, and those that account…

Explores the question of when second language readers use their first language cognitive resources and how this cognitive use of the first language helps them comprehend a second language text. (Author/VWL)

A neuroimaging study examined brain activity of normal subjects performing story comprehension tasks necessitating the attribution of mental states. Brain activity was compared with that from two control tasks. Comparison of the "theory of mind" stories with "physical" stories revealed a specific pattern of activation…

Effect of domain distance on comprehension and memory of scientific passages was investigated through use of near and far analogies read by 193 adults. Results suggest that analogies from far domains promote comprehension and memory. Results support the concept of structure mapping as the underlying process in analogy use. (SLD)