Reading Grade Levels (RGLs) of 185 Rate Training Manuals (RTMs) and 188 Non-Resident Career Courses (NRCCs) were determined using the Flesch Reading Ease Score. Results indicated that the majority of the RTMs and NRCCs were written at the lower college grade level. The RGLs vary widely within each RTM and NRCC, ranging from the seventh grade to…

Focusing on readability and interest factors of instructional materials for adult education, the study examined the possible relationships between performance and expressed interest in individual reading passages and in categories of passages. Passages on one of three levels of difficulty were administered to 180 adult education students from…

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…

Three experiments, in which subjects read passages of variable readability, measured "cognitive capacity usage" (the attention level to reading material) by recording by subjects reaction times in a secondary task (responding to a "click"). The data indicated that the easy texts filled cognitive capacity more completely than the difficult texts,…