This study explores how child and text clues were related to 31 kindergarteners' word-meaning derivation outcomes for 372 words presented in books read aloud to children. Data were analyzed using a multilevel, cross-classification, ordered logit model. Children showed no word-meaning derivation 40% of the time, indicating a need for instruction.…

Three experiments examined the role of phonology in the activation of word meanings in Grade 5 students. In Experiment 1, homophone and spelling control errors were embedded in a story context and participants performed a proofreading task as they read for meaning. For both good and poor readers, more homophone errors went undetected than spelling…

We describe a multiple-route model of reading development in which coarse-grained orthographic processing plays a key role in optimizing access to semantics via whole-word orthographic representations. This forms part of the direct orthographic route that gradually replaces phonological recoding during the initial phases of reading acquisition.…

This article examines how a second-grader demonstrates that reading is not about decoding letters and words in linear order but is a more complex activity involving the reader's decisions with respect to several aspects of their knowledge of their language and how comprehension is key to transacting with texts. The paper observes and documents the…

The most prominent theories of reading consider reading comprehension ability to be a direct consequence of lower-level reading skills. Recently however, research has shown that some children with poor comprehension ability perform normally on tests of lower-level skills (e.g., decoding). One promising line of behavioral research has found…

Describes the steps in the natural process through which children use their syntactic, semantic, and phonological systems in learning to read. (DD)

The purpose of this study was to determine the disruptive effect of unknown words on reading and to examine this effect in relationship to grammatical position and modification type. Forty second grade children from two different lower middle class, semirural schools were randomly assigned to the standardization group or the experimental group.…

In an information-processing approach to language processing, language processing is viewed as a sequence of psychological stages that occur between the initial presentation of the language stimulus and the meaning in the mind of the language processor. This book defines each of the processes and structures involved, explains how each of them…

It has been shown that incidental stimulus attributes are not utilized as much under conditions of high anxiety. It was hypothesized that the nature of this restricted encoding may be interpreted within a levels-of-processing framework. The physical attributes of verbal items (e.g., orthography, sound) may be thought of as shallow features,…

Chomsky and Halle claim that an orthography based on their system of phonological representations of lexical items would be optimal. Their analysis assumes that (1) a reader need read only for meaning and not for sound, (2) an orthography based on their underlying phonological representations would not be exceptionally difficult to learn, and (3)…

This paper explores and discusses the concept of reading comprehension from two major perspectives. One perspective is based on the theory that reading comprehension constitutes a pattern of skills. The other perspective is based on a psycholinguistic view of reading: reading as a language process. Strategies for gaining comprehension during…

After reading text such as Amanda was bouncing all over because she had taken too many tranquilizing sedatives in one day, young adult readers frequently fail to report that they noticed the anomalous noun phrase (NP). Although young readers of all skill levels are susceptible to this kind of shallow semantic processing, less-skilled readers are…

IN ORDER TO MAKE A MACHINE THAT CONVERTS WRITTEN TEXT INTO SPOKEN LANGUAGE (READING MACHINE), IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO MAP SENTENCES OF WRITTEN ENGLISH ONTO CORRESPONDING SENTENCES OF SPOKEN ENGLISH, IN A CONVERSION WHICH THE AUTHOR CALLS "SYNTHETIC ELOCUTION." IN THIS TYPE OF CONVERSION, THE ASSIGNMENT OF PROSODIC FEATURES TO SENTENCES…

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…

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…