Examines the relationship among sources of interest, perceived interest, and text recall. Reveals (through factor analysis) six different sources of interest. Suggests sources of interest affect perceived interest, which in turn affects recall. Suggests that text structure appears to play an important role in perceived situational interest and,…

Examines undergraduate students' imaginative processes (i.e., spontaneous imagery and emotional response) to newspaper articles. Finds that, as in previous studies with literary texts and feature journalism articles, imagery and affective responses (i.e., emotional response and story interest) were moderately to strongly related. Finds that both…

Investigates the relationship between the relative difficulty of passages and the number of unknown words in passages. Finds little support for the theory that free reading results in large vocabulary growth. Calls into question the practice of devoting large amounts of classroom time to free reading if the purpose is to increase vocabulary or…

Explores the effects of the use of aesthetic and efferent stances in response to literature with 43 fourth graders, 47 sixth graders, and 40 eighth graders. Finds use of an aesthetic stance is associated with higher levels of personal understanding and the level of understanding increases with grade level. (MG)

Examines the effect of a variety of picture-text conditions on third and fifth grade average readers' comprehension. Concludes that the advantage of presenting children of normal reading ability with illustrated text is small and primarily dependent on the placement of illustrations adjacent to related textual materials. (RS)

Challenges the widely endorsed practice of activating relevant knowledge prior to reading. Outlines a perspectival (perspective-relative) view of reading and suggests that this view provides a means to make coherent sense of interpretations. Concludes that having specific knowledge is not the main desideratum in interpreting texts--the main…