Shows how visual images and text differ from one another in the extent to which they resemble their referents; kinds of concepts they evoke; precision with which they evoke them; kinds of structures they impose on the information they convey; and degree to which that information can be interpreted by perceptual as opposed to higher level cognitive…

Argues that all the various genres of documents produced in military research and development formulate some sort of problem. Discusses problem formulation and offers a rhetorical map showing their structural relationships to each other. (SR)

Presents a text-linguistic definition of the difference between semantic and pragmatic relations. Shows that the type of context (descriptive, argumentative) appeared not to influence language users' interpretation of clear cases, whereas their judgments of ambiguous relations were influenced by the type of context. Finds informative texts are…

Describes the development of a Spanish version of the Lexile Framework(R) and a Spanish readability equation. Discusses some differences between Spanish and English and how these differences affect the development of the Lexile measures. (SLD)

Explores the ways in which 11- and 12-year-old students used intertextuality within diverse literacy events in a classroom context. Reveals different patterns of intertextual connections depending on discourse mode (oral or written) and the functional context of discourse (literary or informational) in terms of the types of sources to which…

Background: Interest in the interactive effects of prior knowledge and text structure on learning from text is increasing but experimental manipulations of knowledge and structure variables often produce findings that do not help teachers to select expository texts for students. Aims: We aimed to extend the ecological validity of previous findings…

This study extended the work of S. Siddiqui, R. F. West, and K. E. Stanovich (1998), who studied the link between general print exposure and syllogistic reasoning. It was hypothesized that exposure to certain text structures that contain well-delineated logical forms, such as popularized scientific texts, would be a better predictor of deductive…

In this study, we used a novel cognitive paradigm and event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (ER-fMRI) to investigate the neural substrates involved in processing three different types of sentences. Participants read either metaphoric ("Some surgeons are butchers"), literal ("Some surgeons are fathers"), or non-meaningful sentences…

It is a challenge for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to integrate language, social understanding, and emotional intent of messages to understand their social world. They often have deficits in language and social cognition and difficulty interpreting and labeling emotions and incorporating or integrating each of these aspects of…

A brief reading of "Desire under the Elms" by Eugene O'Neill illustrates how a conventional Oedipal reading of the playscript opens up spaces within the text for deconstructive free-play. In this case, a tension is identified and foregrounded between this conventional application of the Oedipal complex and Freud's interpretation of the…

This paper advances the bio-kinetic hypothesis that the Agent-action-Objective (AaO) axiom constitutes the only valid foundation for a behavioral expression of the informational dimensions contained in natural language. Based on the bookkeeping capacity of the discovered AaO mechanism, it is shown that this mechanism can capture emergent (AaO)…

Examines the effects of coherence and relevance on shallow and deeper text processing, testing the hypothesis that enhancing the relevance of text segments compensates for breaks in local and global coherence. Results reveal that breaks in local coherence had no effect on any outcome measures, whereas relevance enhanced deeper processing.…

Focusing on law school texts, reviews literature on the readability of texts and on the limitations of human cognition. The discussion includes a brief history of applicable design principles, a description of empirical studies supporting them, a discussion of the advantages of structured text, and an analysis of some implications of these design…

Presents evidence that indicates recognition memory consists of three separate representations: a surface representation, a propositional textbase, and a situation model. (KEH)

Explores the relation of word and image on the level of both theory and practice in Edward Tufte's "The Visual Display of Quantitative Information." Establishes two dissonant strands in Tufte's work, a positivist strand and a postmodernist strand. (RS)