There is growing consensus that, for trained readers, poetic-text processing involves a genre decision, which triggers genre-based conventional expectations and directs attention to the textual devices. This research examines how students recognize and process texts in poetic versus prose form at different points during their literary education.…

Although research has shown that older adults are negatively affected by aging stereotypes, relatively few studies have attempted to identify those older adults who may be especially susceptible to these effects. The current research takes steps toward identifying older adults most susceptible to the effects of stereotype threat and investigates…

The primary purpose of this report is to explore within the Canadian context the relationship between Self-Reported Learning Disabilities (SRLD) and low literacy performance using the Canadian portion of the public data set from the 2003 International Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey (IALSS). Two primary research questions related to SRLD…

The present study examined data from a large, nationally representative sample--the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NCES, 2007)--to examine how computer use and Internet-based literacy practices (use of e-mail, searching for information on the Internet, and Internet chatting) were related to prose, document, and quantitative literacy…

This study examined the ability of young children to correct comprehension errors, considered to be an aspect of comprehension monitoring. Kindergartners and second graders (N=32) heard a story about an unfamiliar situation, then answered questions which either assessed information contained within a single sentence, required the correct…

Examined effects of enforced organizational strategies on the memory of older adults for textual material. Young and old adults sorted scrambled sentences of a prose passage into the correct order. When older adults were required to make an in-depth analysis to sort material, their incidental memory for textual information was approximately equal…

Investigates the hypothesis that older adults remember prose less well than young adults because they are less sensitive to the structure of prose passages. Results of studies using stories, essays, and essay summaries suggest that the old are as sensitive to passage structure as the young but recall less information. (Author/CB)

This study sought to determine if age-related increases in memory for prose are, in part, due to deliberate mnemonic strategies and if older children use the high order relations in prose more efficiently than younger children. (HOD)

Explored connection between everyday activities of different aged adults (N=54) and their performance on prose recall task. Regression analyses showed that demographic variables of age, education, and verbal ability were best predictors of prose recall. Total time spent reading and other reading variables were also significantly correlated with…

Forty children listened to stories and then answered questions about temporally neutral and temporally tagged information. Observed interactions among age, additional processing, and kind of information demonstrated the importance of the distinction between these types of information for developmental studies of memory of prose. (Author/DB)

Two experiments examined children's ability to apply three different standards for evaluating their understanding. Five-, seven-, nine-, and eleven-year-old children were presented with short narrative passages within which were embedded three types of problems (nonsense words, internal inconsistencies, and prior knowledge violations), each of…

Results confirm that poetry is produced at a younger age than prose, that achieved imminence and life span are positive determinants of the modal productive age, and that these relationships are cross culturally and trans-historically invariant. (Author/AM)

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)

Examined reading habits and activities which may require skills used in prose recall tasks as they occurred in everyday lives of young (N=18), middle-aged (N=18), and older (N=18) adults who kept structured diaries. Everyday activities and reading habits were related to daily life requirements. Pattern of activities was influenced by current…

Assessed degree to which anxiety, hostility, depression, and metamemory predicted recall performance on word list and prose passage. Results from 65 older and 65 younger adults indicated different patterns of personality predictors and some consistent metamemory predictors across tasks. Different measures of anxiety related differently to…