Because reading is not a natural process like language, young learners must be taught to read. Knowledge about how the reading brain develops has critical implications for understanding which teaching methods to use and helps reconceptualize previous debates. In this excerpt from "Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World",…

A set of decoding tests and picture-word interference tasks was administered to third and fifth graders to explore the relationship between single-word decoding, single-word semantic processing, and text comprehension skill. (BRT)

Cognitive and instructional strategies were taught concurrently with a reading program emphasizing auditory skills for 34 mildly retarded elementary students. Participation resulted in no greater improvements in achievement scores for the Ss than for a control group which received no strategy training. (Author/CL)

While semantic development has been alleged to proceed slowly, reading instruction begins early in the child's school career. Yet, little research has been addressed toward understanding how beginning readers extract meaning from the printed word. This paper reports two experiments that measured latencies in a picture-word interference task to…

The results of experiments conducted with college-age subjects point to analogy and generalization as the most likely mechanisms for transferring spelling/sound correspondences in the absence of knowledge of the existence of the correspondences. (GT)

A sample of 133 Spanish children (ages 8 to 13) was classified by IQ and reading level and given a lexical processing task. The study found that IQ did not explain differences between learning-disabled (LD) or nondisabled (NLD) children in lexical processing. Lexical and sublexical parameters had a greater influence on LD students than NLD…

A taxonomy developed for the study of the growth and development of written language from the perspective of social event was tested with a group of 68 children, aged three to six years. The subjects were presented with a wide variety of environmental print messages (road signs, toys, fast food signs, and household products) and were questioned…

Examines the usefulness of the Salience Imbalance Theory of metaphor processing to aid in understanding how children comprehend metaphors in written text. Supports the prediction that the measure of salience of features is affected by the topic order and vehicle (asymmetry), but also reports children's responses not explained by the theory. (KEH)

Recent research in reading comprehension suggests that there are substantial differences between individuals in their patterns of resource allocation to text-based (bottom-up) and knowledge-based (top-down) reading processes. Less able readers tend to overrely on processes in one direction, producing deleterious effects on comprehension. Factors…

Reviews and criticizes literature on the deficiencies of poor readers. (HOD)

Considers whether the development of reading skills in different orthographies varies primarily as a function of common underlying cognitive processes, or as a function of orthographic transparency. Concludes that when the script is less complex young children appear to develop their word recognition skills with relative ease, even in the absence…

Elementary children (n=112) comprising average IQ, high IQ, dyslexic, and normal readers were administered measures of planning, attention-arousal, simultaneous and successive processing, phonemic segmentation, and nonverbal IQ. Cognitive tasks differentiating dyslexic from normal readers were the successive processing tasks and two tasks of…

Reading teachers vary in their teaching methods for reading instruction, usually emphasizing either the meaningful functions (meaning) or the technical features (coding) of written language. This paper reviews literature on the meaning/coding dichotomy and focuses on a "cognitive clarity theory" that stresses linguistic awareness and…

Within the framework of a general model of communication, a model of language communication has been developed and applied to the perception of cohesion. To measure students' perception of textual cohesion, a pilot study in the United Kingdom built "noise" into texts by deleting parts of each texts. Subjects, 59 nonremedial students whose first…

Recent cognitive analyses of the reading process indicate that learning disabled children with word decoding problems will be limited in the development of higher level reading comprehension skills. Microcomputer technology affords the repetitive word recognition practice necessary for successful decoding. (JC)