A study examined whether (1) there are untested indices of difficulty that can be used to enhance the accuracy of readability formulas, (2) the same readability formula can be used to assess the readability of text for mature and immature readers and for good and poor readers, and (3) some one model of the reading process or some synthesis of…

Examines research to determine whether the commonly recommended procedure of determining a student's potential reading level via listening comprehension is valid for the primary grades. Concludes that it is not. (FL)

This paper is concerned with the process of human reading as a high-level perceptual task. Drawing on insights from artificial-intelligence research--specifically, research in natural language processing and continuous speech understanding--the paper attempts to present a fairly concrete picture of the kinds of hypothesis formation and inference…

This paper advocates the view of readability as an interaction between text structure and the cognitive processes and structures possessed by a reader. A simulation model of prose comprehension that yields predictions of both propositional recall and text readability based on the frequencies of different processing events is discussed. The paper…

Reviews a line of research in which the readability of basal reader stories is assessed through a comparison of traditional and story grammar-based indices. Presents implications for the measurement of readability and the preparation of basal reader stories. (FL)

A study investigated how comprehension, as measured by the accuracy and speed of performance, is affected by the information contained in a set of procedural instructions. Using instructions that were varied with respect to the mode of presentation (pictures, text, or pictures and text) and the degree of explicitness of operational information, 68…

To determine whether the connectedness of prose passages had any effect on the behavior of readers who searched for information in the passages, the behavior of readers who saw the normal arrangement of a passage was contrasted with the behavior of readers who saw the random arrangement of the passage. (HOD)

This study examined the adaptability of reading rate to passage difficulty under different conditions of task-induced processing. Sixteen experimental passages varying in subject matter and ranging from 85 to 171 words were selected from a set of 32 texts rated for comprehensibility. The eight easiest and eight hardest texts were selected. Another…

A previous report defined a series of 14 novel measures for determining the comprehensibility of English text on the basis of current psycholinguistic and Structure-of-Intellect concepts. That report not only suggested the potential usefulness of the measures but also conjectured about the feasibility of automating the calculation of these…

Revised two stories from basal readers to improve their coherence without altering their plots. Revisions increased the difficulty of the passages as indexed by readability formulas but enhanced comprehension of both skilled and less skilled readers. (FL)

The review of the literature related to newspaper reading presented in this paper provides a useful background to educators seeking to broaden their understanding of newspaper research and its implications for classroom practice. The research is divided into readability studies, readership studies, and cognition, comprehension, and text analysis…

Two comprehension-time experiments were conducted to identify factors affecting the comprehensibility of written materials. The subjects (a total of 52 college students for the two experiments) were presented with pairs of sentences--"context" sentences followed by "target" sentences--and were asked to relate the content of the target sentences to…

Intended to illuminate current understanding of how the reader's cognition and language and the text's structure affect the processing of prose, this volume contains articles written by educators, linguists, psychologists, and artificial intelligence experts on issues of comprehension research. The first part of the book examines reading…

Three passages of fifth-grade readability were read and recalled by 24 high- and low-ability fifth graders and college students. These passages were characterized as either narrative (high degree of temporal linkage), expository (logical linkage and abstract content), or mixed (logical linkage but with content suggestive of a narrative). The…

The fact that comprehension is a topic that ranges across many fields is shown by the variety of subjects and areas that are considered in this bibliography. Entries are arranged under the following eight sections: Cloze, Critical Reading and Creativity, Factors, Language, Readability, Skills, Theory, and Thinking. A few of the many articles…