The analysis of story recall, a device used widely in reading research to gauge comprehension, typically involves a process of mapping recall against the original story. The process is based on the assumption that subjects are aiming for verbatim recall. To test the validity of this assumption, an analysis was conducted of 20 narrative retellings,…

In light of conflicting and limited results in the assessment of the effects of text-forming structures, a study investigated the effects of specific microlevel and macrolevel text-forming elements on readers' comprehension of selected passages of scientific technical prose. More specifically, the study examined the individual and combined effects…

A study investigated the reading comprehension of 34 college freshmen in relation to the presence of 20 syntactic elements of written language in their expository writing. Language samples included one silent reading comprehension test that identified "high" and "low" readers and two expository in-class themes, one developed…

Two experiments were conducted to determine the features of text to which skilled adult readers need to attend while reading and the features that either are of minimal importance or can be processed automatically without directed processing. In the first experiment, 12 college students attended to a timed picture naming task, in which a picture…

There is ample theoretical and experimental evidence showing the positive impact of interest on academic achievement to suggest that college administrators might be well advised to include "expressed interest" in test batteries designed to facilitate the accurate placement of students in particular courses and curricula. J. Dewey was the…

A pilot study was designed to develop an instrument to examine students' self-perceptions regarding their own reading. An open survey was conducted in which 300 college students in a compensatory reading program listed those factors which might influence a person's reading ability. In all, 163 responses were listed, and these were reduced to 10…

Thus far the several different strategies that have been employed to investigate the size of the perceptual span during reading have not yet resolved the question of whether good readers have a larger span than poor readers. An investigation was designed to determine the region of text from which letter information is used during a fixation of the…

To determine the number of distinct words in printed school English, a study analyzed a 7,260 word sample from the "Word Frequency Book" prepared by J. B. Carroll, P. Davies, and B. Richman. Projecting from the sample to the total vocabulary of school English, the best estimate was that it contained about 88,500 distinct words. Furthermore, for…

While most present research suggests that visual information acquired from peripheral visual areas on one fixation during reading facilitates the identification of words available on the next fixation, some researchers hold with the "word unit hypothesis," which suggests that information gained peripherally from a word on one fixation…

A study examined the effects of prior knowledge and the explicitness of text connectivity on various measures of reading ability. Subjects were 130 eighth grade students who read 6 prose passages that had been manipulated for content familiarity and for use of explicit connectives and implied connectives (those brought about by the author's…