Evaluated effects of perceived choice upon comprehension and memory of prose reading passages. Compared choice and no choice conditions with young and elderly adults and only elderly groups. Results indicated both age- and vocabulary-related deficits. However, perceived choice conditions did not produce any consistent improvement in performance.…

Children 5, 7, 9, and 11 years old were presented short narrative passages imbedded with three types of problems which could only be identified by using three specific evaluation standards. Although older children used standards more effectively, overall problem identification was considerably better than that reported in noninstructed settings.…

Fourth and sixth grade children differing in reading proficiency read and commented on brief expository passages containing three different types of embedded problems (nonsense words, prior knowledge violations, and internal inconsistencies). Half of the children were specificially instructed as to the types of standards they should apply in order…

To investigate the strategies children use in comprehending written stories, third, sixth, and ninth grade students were given scrambled six-sentence stories and asked to reorder them. Three versions of each of six stories were created. The first version was the canonical form of the story predicted by story grammar rules; the second version began…