This article presents the findings of a randomized controlled trial evaluation of the effects of a revised version of the volunteer mentoring programme, "Time to Read." Participating children received two 30-minute mentoring sessions per week from volunteer mentors who carried out paired reading activities with the children. The current…

The increase in studies of the interaction of readers' prior knowledge systems with language cues in print has been a significant trend in reading research. Current research questions reflect the belief that the prior knowledge systems of readers are a principal determinant of what a reader can learn and remember from text. Cognitive style…

Existing mathematical models of word recognition are reviewed and a new theory is proposed in this research. The new theory integrates earlier proposals within a single framework, sacrificing none of the predictive power of the earlier proposals, but offering a gain in theoretical economy. The theory holds that word recognition is accomplished by…

The National Assessment of Reading was not based on any one particular approach to the subject of reading. Its primary assumption was that information would help anyone who is interested in reading--regardless of his approach to the subject--determine for himself how well Americans read. The results of this assessment are reported according to a…

Two sources of information are involved in reading; the visual information picked up by the eyes from the printed page and the nonvisual information, or prior knowledge, that the reader possesses. An overreliance on visual information leads to an overloading of the cognitive process involved in reading and loss in comprehension. Overreliance on…

Four experiments examined influence of task demands on 5- to 9-year olds' and adults' reading strategy. Results showed that less-skilled readers predominantly used simple grapheme-phoneme-level correspondences in reading isolated unfamiliar items. Skilled readers more likely adopted an analogy strategy. The "clue word" technique yielded…

The primary goal of the conference panel on modeling the reading process was to prepare a programatically related set of suggestions which could lead to a clearer account of reading and to an ability to pose successively better research questions. This panel report contains sections on the development of a model for word recognition during…

Paired-associate (PA) learning of children was investigated as a function of age, stimulus-type, and mode of elaboration. Sixty nursery school children (average age 53 months) and 60 first graders (average age 84 months) were selected as subjects. Each child studied nine pairs of objects, photographs, or drawings for two trials of PA learning by…

A common pitfall is the assumption that the teaching of reading in the content areas is an esoteric mystery to be solved only by the reading specialist. The teacher of a content area should guide his students in the application of basic skills and study methods to the materials used. A second pitfall is the assumption, often made by the unskilled…

This volume is an organized collection of papers which were presented at the International Reading Association convention at Atlantic City. The authors are scholars concerned with early childhood education. They explore topics that range from conclusions drawn from research on implicit speech to the advisability of teaching reading to…

The problem of the panel on semantics, concepts, and culture, sponsored by the National Institute of Education Conference on Studies in Reading, was to determine how lexical, semantic, conceptual, and cultural factors contribute to reading comprehension. The contents of the document include the following: "Word Recognition Skills," which…

The aim of the panel on reading comprehension, sponsored by the National Institute of Education Conference on Studies in Reading, was to determine the influence of intellectual factors, general experiences with the world, knowledge specific to the particular reading task, and general decoding skills to successful reading performance. In addition,…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether good and poor readers of the same age levels differed in their performance on a task which required the integration of semantic-syntactic and grapho-phonic information. Fifteen fourth grade good readers, 15 fourth grade poor readers, and 15 second grade good readers read six sentences that had one…

This collection of articles by experts in reading and in language arts contains nine sections: "Educational Change: New Trends and Directions" discusses humanizing teacher education, accountability and the school volunteer; "Instructional Implications from the Disciplines" discusses the reading process, Piaget and reading instruction, and the…