Attempted to determine whether children from grades two and six generate inferences while they read or only later in response to tasks which require inferences. (Author/DB)

Preschool children were presented with short passages in either a story or a communication context. In the first experiment, recall according to importance level was ascertained; in the second, metacognitive awareness of importance level was evaluated. Six-year-olds demonstrated some metacognitive awareness of importance level. Developmental…

Twenty subjects at each of four age levels (8, 10, 12, and 18) rated linguistic units of prose passages in terms of their importance. Third- and fifth-grade subjects did not differentiate items in terms of their relative importance to the text and at all ages such judgments were related to recall. (Author/JMB)

Reports three experiments which tested the hypotheses that: (1) as they mature, students become better able to identify the essential organizing features and crucial elements of text, and (2) that this ability is an essential prerequisite for effective use of a limited processing capacity and restricted time when studying. (JMB)

A sample of 80 first- and second-grade children selected to represent four levels of reading competence were tested in their recognition of semantic, syntactic, and lexical change in sentences previously decoded during prose reading. (JMB)

Two experiments examining the effects of providing appropriate frameworks for comprehending ambiguous sections of prose were conducted with 143 children from second through seventh grade. (Author/JMB)