Recent research and program development in the areas of metacognition and related teaching and learning strategies is the subject of this issue of the newsletter. The lead article reviews reasons for the current interest in cognition and metacognition, clarifies the concepts of cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction, and describes key…

A study examined how experienced kindergarten teachers read a story, an informational text, and a picture-phrase text to their students. Six teachers (five from schools in two small midwestern cities and one from a nearby rural area) were videotaped as they read each book to an average of 25 children in three classes each in order to capture their…

Investigating the selective attention strategy, a study examined the type of attention allocated to important information by good and poor readers. Also tested was the methodological validity of using a conceptual (word recognition) perceptual (tachistoscopic word flash) task as a means of investigating the types of information processing that may…

A study investigated whether instruction focusing on text structure would affect Japanese college students' listening comprehension. Subjects of the study were 29 students of a women's junior college and 38 students of a national university. Three passages were selected for their comprehensibility of content, short length, and readability. Each…

In this paper four classes of procedures for measuring the instructional sensitivity of reading comprehension test items are reviewed. True experimental designs are not recommended because some of the most important reading comprehension variables do not lend themselves to experimental manipulation. "Ex post facto" factorial designs are…

One hundred thirty-nine college students participated in an experiment designed to examine the basis of their abilities to make relative importance distinctions among ideas in a text while reading. Subjects read two texts of 13 paragraphs each. The topics of the two texts were unrelated, but their topic structure was similar. For each of the…

Prompted by current theories in reading suggesting that variation in word knowledge affects the processing of not only individual words but also clauses and sentences, this report explores some different ways in which children's comprehension processes may be affected by variation in word knowledge. The report first examines whether the effects of…

A study investigated the relationship between sixth grade students' reading attitudes and awareness of certain parameters of reading and their performance on a reading comprehension test. Subjects, 100 students scoring between the 5th and the 95th percentiles on the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills (ITBS) comprehension section, completed a reading…

This 3-year research project, centered on the cognitive psychology of child-computer interaction, focused on the use of microcomputers for teaching specific topics in mathematics and science. In particular, issues arising from the use of computer-based simulations to promote learning (including the nature of the information displayed, the degree…

A study examined (1) relationships between background knowledge and reading passage comprehension, (2) the reliability of a passage-specific background knowledge measure used as the knowledge criterion, (3) the effect of a prereading language and concept organizer activity on available background knowledge, and (4) the effect of that prereading…

Research has consistently shown that vocabulary knowledge, including both word recognition skills and understanding of word meaning, is highly predictive of achievement in other aspects of reading--oral and silent reading and comprehension. The importance of instruction in word recognition and decoding has been recently demonstrated by the rise in…

Optimal-level theories maintain that the quality of affect is a function of a quantitative arousal potential dimension. An alternative view is that the quantitative dimension merely modulates preexisting qualitative properties and is therefore only responsible for changes in the degree of affect. Thus, the quality of affect, whether it is positive…

A study examined the nature of the schematic processes for a story presented in television, text, and radio form and for a story presented to above average and average readers. The story was parsed according to J. M. Mandler and N. S. Johnson's story grammar. Schematic processing was inferred from the pattern of node memorability for the different…

One area explored in the second (in-depth) phase of the Learning in Science Project was "children's science," defined as views of the world and the meanings for words that children have and bring with them to science lessons. The investigation reported focuses on the concept of "light" held by 36 students. Data were obtained…

The Learning in Science Project established that children from a young age construct out of their everyday experiences views which they use to explain their world and that these views are remarkably resistant to replacement by scientifically more useful views. Although science lessons tend to be based upon activities which are designed by teachers…