Three different experiments were conducted to examine several variables that influence the recall of prose. In Experiment I a study was made of the influence of differing imagery level nouns as the subject and object of the preposition of a sentence; it also provided a further test of the conceptual peg model, i.e., the concrete-concrete-subject…

This study addressed whether students could change their reading rate when presented with two clearly explicated purposes for reading. Results indicated that students could adapt their reading rate to fit different purposes but that passage difficulty affected the degree of flexibility. (Author/GK)

The differential effects of idea levels of pre-writing questions and number of questions upon measures of elaboration in writing were examined. The interaction between the level and number of pre-writing questions and processing time in three writing experiments with a total of 174 undergraduate students was assessed. (TJH)

The extent to which variables from a previous study (P. Mosenthal, 1996) on document processing influenced difficulty on 165 tasks from the pose scales of five national adult literacy scales was studied. Three process variables accounted for 78% of the variance when prose task difficulty was defined using level scores. Implications for computer…

The patterning of recall of linguistic subunits was found to be strongly related to the semantic dimensions of abstractness-concreteness, specificity of denotation, comprehensibility, and interest. (Author/BJG)

Seven experiments were performed to address three issues: prose decisions of different levels of difficulty, directed attention effect, and the effects of decisions on memorability of prose among relatively good and relatively poor readers. (Author/PN)

A distinctiveness of encoding hypothesis, as applied to the facilitative effects that higher order objectives have on readers' prose recall, was evaluated in three experiments. Results suggest that distinctiveness of encoding may offer a theoretical basis for the effects of adjunct aids as well as a guide to their construction. (Author/GK)

The preferred coding processes of 11-year-old children were investigated, as well as the effect of these preferences on recall of verbal material which varied by complexity of imagery, metaphor, and acoustic and semantic features. The hypothesized relationship between coding and personality was studied (f=fiche number). (MH)

Undergraduates read a prose passage and were tested on its contents. Difficulty, permission to underline key phrases, and financial motivation were varied. Non-highly motivated subjects performed better on the easy version; underlining aided highly motivated subjects and those reading the difficult version. (Author/RD)

Four levels of notetaking (summary, paraphrase, verbatim, and letter search) were used to control depth of processing of a prose passage with high school students, who then either reviewed their notes or read an interpolated text. Results favored groups with deeper levels of processing on two post-tests. (Author/RD)

Adolescents with deafness or partial hearing were assessed on memory for relational and distinctive information when text structure and material concreteness were manipulated. Deaf and hard-of-hearing readers were less likely than hearing readers to integrate text information across idea units, although they may retain as much information from…

In three experiments subjects (college and high school students) read passages which described psychological principles and answered either adjunct application or factual questions while reading. Questions were presented either before, after, or both before and after the parts of the passage that answered the questions. Subsequently subjects took…

Two studies investigated interactions among position of adjunct questions (inserted before or after sections of instructional prose), reading ability, and direct versus indirect learning outcomes for 74 deaf postsecondary and 100 hearing middle school students. Different effects were observed for deaf and hearing readers and for different levels…

To help increase the understanding of sources of difficulty in test items, a study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of various aspects of prose complexity on the difficulty of achievement test items. The items of interest were those that presented a verbal stimulus followed by a question about the stimulus and a standard set of…

A study investigated differences in discourse styles that may affect second language listening comprehension. Ten amateur actors performed three speaking tasks: (1) reading aloud a short self-contained narrative; (2) acting out a memorized script; and (3) conversing with the researcher for 20-30 minutes. Excerpts of the recorded tasks in different…