A study investigated how two text-based factors, word relationships and surface syntactic structure, interact with readers' ability to analyze the semantic relationships and make inferences based on those analyses. In each passage, the influence of word relationships was assessed by manipulating the degree of semantic entailment between two words…

A study examined the effects of formal and informal learning environments on the storage and recall of lexical items in the first and second languages, paying specific attention to laterality and accuracy rates for tasks of varying difficulty. The study used the dichotic listening task and subjects whose first language was English and whose second…

A study assessed the effect of the use of reasoning message strategies on (1) a generally accepted goal of instruction (critical thinking) and (2) the affective behavior of students (attitudes toward the instruction). Subjects, 68 college students enrolled in journalism/mass communication classes, participated in one of three treatment groups that…

To explore how readers create textual meanings or interpretations from written materials, a study that investigated reading from a semiotic perspective was conducted. The study's design was based on the principle of prior ethnography and employed data collection techniques common to field studies: participant/intervention and interviewing.…

As part of a course in French for foreign post-graduate engineering students, recordings of a series of lectures in information science were used to highlight some of the problems involved in the comprehension of spoken scientific discourse. In order to observe whether repetitions within oral discourse were perceived as such by non-French speaking…

Two studies examined how the factors of content-relevant knowledge and text organization influence students' abilities to study and to remember text information. The first experiment examined the effect of prior content knowledge on students' ability to identify important information in the text. Forty 7th- and forty 11th-grade students, experts…

Building on previous ethnographic research on middle school students' reading and writing activities, a study examined the continuity and change in students' use of, control of, and access to reading and writing resources from kindergarten through grade 8 in an elementary school, a middle school, and the community. Reading and writing resources…

Attempting to present empathy as a vital ingredient of effective interpersonal listening, this paper first provides a brief historical tracing of the major trends in listening theory and research. This review then serves as a backdrop for a partial justification of an empathic listening emphasis that includes a clarification of some misconceptions…

Recognizing a word in a meaningful text involves processes that combine information from many different sources, and both bottom-up processes (such as feature extraction and letter recognition) and top-down processes (contextual information) are thought to interact when skilled readers recognize words. Two similar experiments investigated word…

This issue contains proceedings of a colloquium on linguistics at the University of Neuchatel: (1) "Propositions epistemologiques pour une etude du bilinguisme (Epistemological Propositions for a Study of Bilingualism)," by B. Py; (2) "Comment on di ca? Prolegomenes a une etude de la composante semantique du langage des migrants (How Do You Say…

Part of a research project designed to develop a theory of the cognitive processes involved in skilled reading by the analysis of the location and duration of eye fixations, this paper concentrates on how eye fixations can be used to determine when encoding, lexical access, parsing, and integration processes are executed and how they are affected…

The premise that using language is a thinking process is central to the computerized diagnostic test being developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS). The test developers are making a significant educational contribution by describing the reciprocal and dynamic relationship between language and thinking. Reading comprehension has been…

This paper discusses receiver apprehension, an information processing syndrome, in the context of counterattitudinal advocacy. Receiver apprehension was conceptualized as a trait anxiety associated with misinterpreting, inadequately processing, and/or being unable to adjust to incoming messages. This processing anxiety suggested cognitive rigidity…

The difficulty of computer programming and other design tasks is a function of the multiple abstractions that combine to form a program's meaning. Thus, comprehension of the final form of a program design, the program text, involves retrieving multiple sets of relationships between parts. The research presented here addresses which, if any,…

A study explored context effects on two selected indexes of communicative competence in the narrative language of a sample of first grade children. The 30 subjects each completed 2 tasks--the retelling of a story that had been read to them and the dictation of an original story. These narratives were recorded and analyzed for linguistic competence…