Tests the hypothesis that different assigned purposes for reading led to changes in the "interestingness" and recall of text material. Concludes that reading for a particular purpose enhances the interestingness of text information even when that information is not intrinsically interesting. Discusses educational implications. (BS)

Investigates the process involved in acquiring word knowledge from written context in prereading kindergarten children. Analyzes children's readings of picture books to identify patterns of vocabulary growth. Concludes that children learned lexicogrammatical information incidentally through exposure to written context. (MM)

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…

Investigates the effects of reader perspective and cognitive style on encoding, storage, and retrieval processes. Finds that structural characteristics of the text itself may affect storage and retrieval processes but not encoding processes, and that reader perspective shows no effect on a delayed recognition test. (RS)

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)

Explores the nature of the picture story book event from a semiotic perspective. Describes a classroom event in which a picture story book was constructed during teacher-student-text interaction in a second grade classroom using involving oral reading and discussion, interpretations of the main character's traits, letters to the author, and…

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…

Critiques current understandings of children's motivation for literacy learning, and argues for a reconceptualization of motivation that centers on the learner as agent in the social construction of meaning. Uses vignettes and examples from studies conducted in whole-language classrooms to investigate children's perspectives of their own literacy…