This paper provides a general description of schema-theoretic models of language comprehension and examines some extensions of such models to the study of reading. The goal of schema theory is to specify the interface between the reader and the text: to specify how the reader's knowledge interacts with and shapes the information on the page and to…

Two studies investigated whether variations in the importance of inferences and the salience of premises within a text would affect the probability that the inference would be made. Six stories of about 500 words were used, with eight variations of each story. The target inference, and its plausibility, was constant across all versions. Inference…

In an attempt to measure the effect that dialect of presentation has on Black-English-speaking children's oral reading performance, this study measured the percentage of unknown words attempted by third and fifth grade subjects on equivalent forms of an oral reading task presented in Standard English, Black English standard orthography, and Black…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the concepts of reading of first-grade and third-grade children, to describe the relationship of these concepts to the children's intelligence and reading achievement, and to investigate the differences between the concepts of reading of first and third graders. The subjects for the study were 30…

Forty-three college students read a specially prepared text either with or without inserted questions. The text and the questions were presented on a computer terminal to allow measurement of reading times on short segments of material. Question groups performed better, relative to controls, on posttest items that repeated inserted questions and…

This study sought to develop a method for describing readers' perceptions of the topical organization of prose and to specify text features that determine perception of organization. A hierarchical clustering analysis was applied to high-school and college readers' judgments of the topical relatedness of sentences in two prose passages. This…

This study investigated the directionality of the relationship between self-esteem and reading achievement in 286 students in Lynchburg, Virginia. During the first year of the three-year study, subjects were fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. The Coopersmith Self-Esteem Inventory and the SRA Achievement Series subscales were administered; sex and…

One year after they had participated in the validation of the Estes Reading Attitude Scale, 75 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders were asked to respond to and comment on the questions in an interview situation. Thirty-six of these students had scored low on the attitude inventory but high on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; 39 had scored high on the…

Supports the hypothesis that cloze measures the extent to which linguistic cues in the immediate environment of a missing word tend to supply meaning. (RB)

Confirmed the hypothesis that those in the three-dimensional instructional group would make fewer confusion errors that those in the two-dimensional instructional group on a transfer task in reading. (RB)

Examined the hypothesis by Chomsky and Halle that English spelling corresponds to an underlying lexical level of representation rather than to a surface phonetic level, i.e., pronunciation. (RB)

Analysis of similar shapes for high-frequency words does not verify the hypothesis that shape provides a useful learning cue for teaching word recognition. (RB)

Provides evidence that current reading textbooks contain racist and sexist stereotypes despite promises to make changes, and concludes that these stereotypes are harmful to the students who learn from such textbooks. (RB)

Suggests color highlighting as an effective method of improving word recognition visual discrimination skills. (RB)

The study found that intonation or melody pattern contributes to reading comprehension ability. (JH)