Describes the nature and occurrence of knowledge-construction links (KCLs) in 3 6th-grade classrooms that varied in degree of learner centeredness. KCLs are operationalized as prior learning that students bring to their current classroom experiences and include school and nonschool experiences. They are hypothesized to facilitate a…

Provides suggestions for activating prior knowledge, getting children to be aware when their comprehension is lagging, and tying it all together at the end. (FL)

Discusses the results of a study that examined the relationship between comprehension ability and prior knowledge in children's recall of structurally equivalent text. (AEA)

Argues that the mystery surrounding comprehension development can be dispelled by an understanding of schema theory and linguistic theory and especially by an understanding of W. Kintsch's model of comprehension, which draws from those bodies of theory. Describes teaching methods based upon Kintsch's model. (FL)

Argues that children develop knowledge in layers, increasing those layers each time the topic is covered. Reviews three sets of materials that provide a background of experience, vocabulary, and text structure for use in science instruction. (FL)

Describes semantic mapping, an effective strategy for vocabulary instruction that involves the categorical structuring of information in graphic form and requires students to relate new words to their own experience and prior knowledge. (HOD)

This conference presentation describes how students develop the cognitive processes through which they acquire knowledge from their classroom experiences. The data were taken from five studies of individual students' classroom experience and its relationship to the learning of curriculum content in typical science and social studies units in the…

Describes two studies showing that young readers may have trouble with comprehension when text contradicts their own prior knowledge. (FL)

Describes an instructional procedure based on the findings of schema research and illustrating the truth that the more students know about a subject, the better they can comprehend what they read about that subject. (FL)

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses that the ability to draw inferences from a text about an unstated agent is based on the quality of information available to the reader, and that the quality of the information is itself based on the unique nature of cues embedded in the text and on the relevance of prior knowledge held by the…

A study was conducted to determine the benefits of an approach to teaching inferential skills that combined an explicit attempt to sensitize children to why and how one should draw inferences to prior knowledge with substantial practice in drawing such inferences during story discussions. Subjects were 20 good and 20 poor fourth grade readers who…

In an effort to create a multilevel, interactive, and hypothesis-based model of the reading comprehension process that bridges interdisciplinary gaps in the theory of learning, this report focuses on descriptions of cognitive processes developed in the fields of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, sociolinguistics, linguistics, and…

Predicated on the assumption that many of the problems exhibited by learning disabled children arise from difficulties they have in processing information, the program of research described in this paper was undertaken to (1) identify reading comprehension difficulties that are due to disorders in the reader, and (2) design and test effective…

The effectiveness of three instructional approaches was investigated in a study of how best to facilitate vocabulary acquisition. The three approaches were (1) the cognitive approach, a method employing dictionary worksheets and patterned after the most commonly used method of teaching vocabulary; (2) the affective approach, which urged students…

An overview is presented of information processing analyses of knowledge and performance in three areas of the elementary mathematics curriculum: basic addition and subtraction facts, complex procedures such as multicolumn subtraction, and the solution of word problems. Theories of the knowledge associated with "expert" performance are discussed.…