This article proposes an integrated cognitive theory of reading and listening that draws on a maximalist account of comprehension and emphasizes the role of bottom-up and top-down processing. The theoretical framework draws on the findings of previous research and integrates them into a coherent and plausible narrative to explain and predict the…

This study investigated visual statistical learning (VSL) in 24 deaf signers and 24 hearing non-signers. Previous research with hearing individuals suggests that SL mechanisms support literacy. Our first goal was to assess whether VSL was associated with reading ability in deaf individuals, and whether this relation was sustained by a link between…

Reading difficulties are experienced by children either because they fail to decode the words and thus are unable to comprehend the text or simply fail to comprehend the text even if they are able to decode the words and read them out. Failure in word decoding results from a failure in phonological coding of written information, whereas, reading…

Among his many accomplishments in educational psychology, Merlin C. Wittrock is perhaps best remembered for his enduring contributions to the science of learning. His vision of how learning works is best explicated in articles published in "Educational Psychologist" (Wittrock, 1974, 1978, 1989, 1991, 1992), beginning with his classic 1974 article,…

This article presents the authors' response to McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek's "Schema Theory Revisited." In "Schema Theory Revisited," McVee, Dunsmore, and Gavelek (2005) proposed a rearticulation of schema theory intended to encompass the ideas that schemata and other cognitive processes are embodied, that knowledge is situated in the transaction…

Knowledge integration is the incorporation of related facts into comprehensive memory structures. This article examines the research on knowledge integration, particularly in relation to text comprehension. The paper contrasts knowledge integration theories as well as factors affecting the probability of integrating information from text.…

Finds that giving students background knowledge of a subject improved their performances on a test of reading comprehension. (AEA)

Reading researchers and theorists are sharply divided as to how meaning is obtained from the printed word. Three current explanations are that (1) meaning is accessed directly, without any intermediate processes; (2) meaning is accessed only through an intermediate phonemic stage; and (3) both direct access and phonemic mediation can occur. To…

A study tested the assumption found in schema theory that scripted knowledge automatically provides specific content details about scripted activity, thereby biasing a reader's immediate interpretation of a text. The study measured how quickly and accurately 16 college students could verify script related words. Subjects listened to four scripted…

Discusses study which supported the Piagetian theory concerning the cognitive functioning of the concrete operational child. (JM)

To characterize basic processes of reading comprehension, this report focuses on how the reader's schemata, or knowledge already stored in memory, function in the process of interpreting new information and allowing it to enter and become a part of the knowledge store. The paper first traces the historical antecedents of schema theory, then…

Reader-response criticism may elucidate the relationship between reading and knowing. Unfortunately, discussions of stylistics and convention in anthologies of reader response criticism tend to focus on fairly specialized literary problems. David Bleich's subjective paradigm provides a framework through which the study of both response and…

Presents evidence in support of the ordered search model of word meaning computation in sentence contexts. This model hypothesizes that access to multiple meanings occurs in a fixed order regardless of context. (AM)

This report summarizes computational investigations of language comprehension based on Marvin Minsky's theory of frames, a recent advance in artifical intelligence theories about the representation of knowledge. The investigations discussed explored frame theory as a basis for text comprehension by implementing models of the theory and developing…

Offers three explanations drawn from language and literature theories about what happens when people read: (1) receiving sense, (2) finding sense, and (3) making sense. (EL)