Investigates effects of prior knowledge on learning from high- and low-coherence history texts. Examines participants' comprehension in two experiments. Finds high-knowledge readers performed better on open-ended questions after reading low-coherence text. Indicates that low-coherence text requires more inference processes--these inferences are…

Examines effects on recall and comprehension of a passage from a fourth-grade textbook and versions revised for greater coherence or to exhibit voice. Finds that, immediately after reading, the voiced coherent passage held significant advantage over all other passages in both recall and comprehension. Finds similar, though statistically…

A study examined the effect of amount of intervening text on the detection of semantic inconsistencies and use of strategic backtracking, by competent and less competent college readers. Data were elicited from 40 undergraduate students (selected on the basis of their high or low scores on a variety of instruments) enrolled in an introductory…

A study found that both paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of text were important for signifying meaning of text in the reading comprehension of 102 Australian students at 3 age levels (10, 12, and 14 years). Underlying comprehension problems was a lack of prior experience of text topics. Reading preparation through developing shared meanings is…

Research about the interrelationship between reading comprehension and written production is reported that is assumed to contribute to teaching syllabi in these areas, by the nature of the processes that underlie reading and writing. Reading and writing are shown to be two sides of the same cognitive process. (26 references) (LB)

A study investigated how a knowledge or lack of knowledge of basic text structures, such as comparison and contrast and cause and effect, contributes to the reading process in remedial adolescent readers. By observing a group of graduate students and through the close study of a few adolescent case studies, a researcher attempted to determine if…

Investigates the usefulness of using grammatical cohesion to evaluate the macro- or discourse-level, and the micro-level reading comprehension of English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) students. Finds a relationship between anaphora and coherence that contributes to reading difficulty. (MG)

Two experiments investigated the role of text coherence in junior high school students' comprehension of science texts. Found that text coherence improved readers' comprehension, but also that giving readers with sufficient background knowledge an incoherent text that forced them to infer unstated relations engaged them in compensatory processing,…