The comprehension of deviant sentences is dependent on several linguistic variables. Grammaticalness (G), meaningfulness (M), and familiarity (F) are three variables which are potentially such. In order to study the effect of violating these variables upon Ss' responses to deviant sentences, 85 deviant and 15 correct sentences were assigned to…

A selection of papers presented at the Second World Congress on Reading held in Copenhagen in August, 1968, reflects the views of educators from 25 countries on facets of reading instruction. Central to the Congress was its stress on education as a human right. The raising of literacy goals and the roles played by various agencies in accomplishing…

The major focus of this abstract bibliography is to list research studies and journal articles reported in the ERIC/CRIER Basic References which identify and examine the many variables influencing reading comprehension. The entries in Part One, which includes citations and abstracts of documents published from 1950 to 1969, have been organized…

This study examined children's preferences for three qualitative levels of thinking--abstract, functional, and concrete--in vocabulary. It was hypothesized that whereas older, more mature readers would choose abstract meaning, younger readers would choose concrete meaning regardless of the nature of the material, and also that a dominant cognitive…

Differentiation of the effects of cultural deprivation and achievement characteristics as they relate to auditory comprehension and by implication to potential reading ability was investigated. A total of 80 eighth-grade students were classified into four experimental groups: deprived-achievers, deprived-nonachievers, nondeprived-achievers, and…

In order to determine whether the kind of process underlying cloze responses is indeed a systematic and exhaustive search, a study was conducted exploring some corollaries to such a search hypothesis. It was assumed that subjects would generate responses representing a number of word types, that some of these word types would be sensible and some…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect that systematic training in purposive listening has on seventh-grade pupils. Ninety subjects were randomly selected and assigned to three groups: an experimental group which received purposive listening treatment, an isolated-control group which received instruction in literature study with no…

The relationship between a person's behavior and the interaction with his immediate environment is discussed as a shaping process. The behavior that is shaped is always that which is directly and crucially involved in the choice he makes, the response he makes, and the way that response affects him in the given situation. The abstraction process…

Research indicates the existence of a relationship between the level of visual perceptual skills in the first grade and academic success in later grades. Special visual-motor training was given to some 275 primary school children with a like number of children acting as a control group. The control group was one grade ahead of the experimental…

In this study, the Peabody Language Development Kit, originally designed for culturally deprived and mentally retarded children, was tested to see how it affected the psycholinguistic abilities and beginning reading development of normal children. Ninety-seven kindergartners were randomly divided into an experimental group who used the Peabody Kit…

A program for secondary remedial reading instruction was developed to use operant conditioning techniques with the following major objectives: (1) to train the student to decode words systematically, (2) to develop the student's verbal repertoire, (3) to improve reading comprehension, and (4) to shape scholarly attitudes and behavior. Pupils were…

Forty-two brain injured boys and 42 non brain injured boys (aged 11-6 to 12-6) were tested to determine the effects of increasing amounts of visual and auditory distraction on reading performance. The Stanford Achievement Reading Comprehension Test was administered with three degrees of distraction. The visual distraction consisted of either very…

The acquisition of thinking skills is being stressed today by educators in all fields. There are, however, no clear and concise concepts of the different faces of comprehension which deal with higher mental processes. If the thinking skills are to be implemented, certain objectives must first be met: more research must be conducted in regard to…

A child's language development during the elementary school years is described, with emphasis on acquisition and control of structural and lexical dimensions of the language of standard and nonstandard speakers and with special concern for the relationship between language production and the reading process. Numerous research studies are reviewed…

Four researchers discussed their studies of oral reading miscues within a round-table format. After each participant's description of the specific concerns and procedures of his study, the following topics were discussed: description and analysis of the miscue, correction strategy, relationship of the child's language to the language of the…