This annual report contains summaries of more than 1,200 reading research studies that appeared in print between July 1, 1979 and June 30, 1980. The summaries are arranged into six major categories. The first category lists other general bibliographies offering summaries of reading research, while the second category presents summaries of studies…

Using computer controlled text presentation that permitted the measurement of reading time for individual sentences, a study tested two hypotheses concerning how schemata guide reading comprehension. The focusing hypothesis suggested that the schemata activated by the reader's perspective might identify relevant information to which additional…

A sample consisting of 115 college students participated in a study of the relationships between reading rate, reading comprehension, and related independent variables (attitude, motivation, and interest). A short story was used for obtaining objective rate and comprehension scores for each subject. Two questionnaires designed for the study were…

A battery of four reading readiness assessment tasks was administered to 267 first grade students to determine if the tasks predicted reading achievement as well as the Metropolitan Readiness Test (MRT). The four tasks, which were the best predictors in a previous study of seven readiness tasks, were the aural word boundaries task, the…

Reading times can be a valuable source of data on comprehension processes, especially in the case of recording reading times on individual sentences in a passage. To overcome the methodological problems encountered in other research efforts concerning reading times, a multiple regression method was used to compare an ordinary language processing…

The effects of high intensity tutorial/enrichment treatments involving language arts process development were the major research concerns of a two-summer project designed to provide preservice and inservice teacher education students with training in the development of language arts processes and in planning for instruction corresponding to a…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effects of a remedial reading program upon reading attitude, reading achievement, self-concept, and intellectual achievement responsibility; (2) a reading…

A study examined the effect of bibliotherapy on the self-concept of seven neurologically impaired primary students in a self-contained classroom. The students were pretested and posttested with the Piers-Harris Children's Self-Concept Scale and the Self-Concept Picture Inventory. Two filmstrips from the "Who Am I?" series were shown daily to the…

A group of 767 children in Finland were studied over their first six years in school to discover what kind of variation there is in school readiness, what kind of development takes place in these variables during the basic school period, what relationship exists between these variables, to what extent heredity explains the differences, how far the…

This document reviews the changes in reading in Denmark from 1934 to 1976 and discusses factors that brought about the changes. The paper indicates the importance of the library in reading development and notes that children use the library more extensively today than they did earlier. Changes in society and their effects on the educational system…

Three passages of fifth-grade readability were read and recalled by 24 high- and low-ability fifth graders and college students. These passages were characterized as either narrative (high degree of temporal linkage), expository (logical linkage and abstract content), or mixed (logical linkage but with content suggestive of a narrative). The…

To determine whether miscue analysis instruction changed their perceptions of the seriousness of certain kinds of errors in children's oral reading, 60 undergraduate and graduate students were given an error survey to complete before and after being given such instruction. Each of the 32 items of the survey consisted of a pair of sentences, with…

An investigation was conducted to ascertain the effects of the structured overview on both the short-term and long-term comprehension of average and below average readers. The subjects were 143 college students classified as average or below average readers and randomly assigned to either a structured overview (65) or a control group (78). Both…

To investigate relationships among reading scores, college academic performance, degree expectations, self-assessed skills, and retention, data from "The Nelson-Denny Reading Test" and background information from "The New Student Survey" were correlated with the freshman year academic performance and enrollment status at the beginning of the…

A previously published discussion of the ACER "Australian Studies in School Performance" suggests that the performance of students constitutes a concern; however, it is possible to be encouraged by evidence from the study that 97% of 10 year olds and 99% of 14 year olds have mastered the abilities to understand simple written sentences.…