The purpose of this study was to examine predictors of music sight-reading ability. The authors hypothesized that speed and accuracy of music sight-reading would be predicted by a combination of aural pattern discrimination, spatial-temporal reasoning, and technical proficiency. Participants (N = 70) were wind players in concert bands at a…

Matched groups of normal and retarded readers were required to perform same/difference judgments in which the interval between standard and comparison stimuli was either 0, 1, or 6 seconds. (BRT)

Skilled and less skilled beginning readers (n=54) were taught to read and define 10 printed pseudowords. Post-tests revealed that experimentals retaining spellings in memory as orthographic images remembered spellings better than controls who received comparable training without the memory component. (PN)

The study, involving 39 intermediate-grade disabled readers, found that visualization instruction plus pictorial display, in which subjects were instructed to make pictures in their minds and were shown a pictorial display that illustrated the temporal-spatial sequence of the reading text, was particularly effective in facilitating subjects'…

In two studies, sixth graders (Study 1) and fourth graders (Study 2) listened to or read a text. Some students were asked to imagine pictures of the material. Oral presentation of the material produced better results than written-only forms. Fourth graders benefited more from mental imagery than did sixth graders. (Author/JJD)

Examined were the development of reading and reading-related abilities in 6 severely emotionally disturbed institutionalized boys 12- to 15-years-old who demonstrated unexpected rote reading abilities (4th- to 6th-grade levels) despite moderate to severe intellectual retardation. (CL)

A battery of tests requiring sequential responses, including WISC Digit Span, WISC Picture Arrangement, ITPA Digits, and ITPA Visual Motor Sequencing, was administered to 114 children. Fifty-seven children ranging in age from 6.6 to 13.7 years were clients referred to a reading clinic for diagnosis of reading difficulties; the other 57 were…

Project TALENT is a longitudinal survey designed to investigate the personal, educational, and experiential factors that promote or inhibit the development of human talents. Extensive data were obtained in 1960 from a sample of over 400,000 students in grades 9-12 in the United States. These data included cognitive skills of the individuals, their…

This study of 78 prelingually deaf children (ages 6-13) who were educated orally found that children up to 9 years old seemed to process written words by means of visual codes. Older children tended to differentiate and preferred either a visual or speech-based strategy, with the latter associated with better reading performance. (Author/JDD)

This study examined the relation of reading ability, age, and familiarity to iconic and short-term memory processing and how the familiarity of the stimuli affects recall. A total of 10 children in grades 2 through 6 and 10 adults were shown novel abstract forms, words, and non-words varying in order of approximation to English, for 50 msec., 500…

To examine the role of phonetic code in memory, a study investigated the use of phonetic recoding strategies in fifth and sixth graders identified as good and poor readers. Subjects--120 students with IQ scores in the average range--were divided evenly between both grades. Thirty subjects from each grade who scored above the 50th percentile on the…

Many struggling readers, students with English as a second language, and children with disabilities do not engage in the strategies that good readers use when reading for understanding. Reading comprehension depends upon the students' ability to successfully use strategies to monitor and control their own comprehension. Teachers need to help…

The Project TALENT Data Bank is a series of 55 machine-readable data files (MRDF) that resulted from a longitudinal study of selected United States high school students in grades 9 through 12 during 1960. Project TALENT was designed to investigate the personal, educational, and experiential factors that promote or inhibit the development of human…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects of metacognitive comprehension monitoring strategies on fourth grade students' reading comprehension and recall performance; (2) elementary school…