This article explores 11-year-old children's connections to prior knowledge and experiences while reading a wordless version of "Little Red Riding Hood." The study extends pre-existing research on reader response theories by focusing on images instead of written text. The approach taken places emphasis on the reader's active engagement,…

Theoretical models of word recognition suggest that knowing what a word means makes it easier to learn how to decode it. We tested this hypothesis with at-risk young students, a group that often responds poorly to conventional decoding instruction in which word meaning is not addressed systematically. A total of 53 first graders received explicit…

This study examined the contribution of word decoding, first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) vocabulary and prior topic knowledge to L2 reading comprehension. For measuring reading comprehension we employed two different reading tasks: Woodcock Passage Comprehension and a researcher-developed content-area reading assignment (the Global…

Failure to "activate" relevant, existing background knowledge may be a cause of poor reading comprehension. This failure may cause particular problems with inferences that depend heavily on prior knowledge. Conversely, teaching how to use background knowledge in the context of gap-filling inferences could improve reading comprehension in…

In present-day knowledge societies, readers cannot understand complex issues without constructing meaning across multiple information sources. To what extent they are able to do so may depend on both characteristics of reading tasks and characteristics of readers themselves. In this study, 184 undergraduates read multiple texts about the complex…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which problem analysis facilitated the subsequent processing of expository text, both for novices and a comparison group. A text on osmosis consisted of six-pages and was used as reading material. The ninth-grade students were considered novices because they were unfamiliar with the…