A recurring theme within the prolific body of research on reader response is that of reader stance. Although several prominent theories of reader response spring from different perspectives, they share one common property: each describes reader response in terms of two opposed domains with particular responses falling somewhere on a continuum…

A study examined the relative contributions of semantic and non-semantic sources of redundancy in printed English, which play a central role in information processing models. Subjects, 40 undergraduate college students, were divided into two groups. One group predicted missing characters using English text, and the second group was required to…

Eye movements of 32 newspaper readers (ranging in age from 22 to 50 years) were measured as they viewed four pages of varying use of color and black-and-white photographs. The eye-fixation data recorded by a computerized apparatus showed precisely where subjects looked, in what order they processed information on the page, and how long and how…

A study investigated the attitudes toward reading of Western Kansas students in grades 1-6. Of the 156 students in the sample, 45 participated in the study group while 111 constituted the control group. The independent variables were participation status, achievement in reading, gender, socioeconomic class status, intelligence test scores, and…

Noting that electronic technology is becoming more advanced and more available, this paper argues that current conceptions of literacy as the ability to read and write should be expanded to include electronic reading and writing. The paper discusses: (1) four ways in which electronic texts are different from printed texts; (2) how students can be…

A study investigated the impact of direct instruction on reading comprehension strategies and the degree to which cooperative learning processes enhance students' learning of strategies. Subjects, 486 third- and fourth-grade students in four elementary schools from an ethnically diverse school district in a medium-sized city in central…

A study examined how many of 11 key words in 4 famous Mother Goose nursery rhymes were understood by parents of first graders. The first questionnaire (designed to determine if context clues were helpful in deciphering what words meant) was returned by 37 parents in an urban school district and by 49 parents in a suburban school district. The…

This pamphlet provides current information about the 1992 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in Reading. In addition to describing the purpose and goals of the NAEP, the pamphlet discusses the reasons for assessing reading, the 1992 NAEP in Reading (including recent changes), the guidelines used to create a framework for reading…

A study investigated the decoding automaticity of elementary students when receiving rule-based instruction (as a process of applying syllable and structural analysis rules and limited phonics), and when receiving holistic instruction in a whole language program (exercises in listening, reading and writing, integrated with classroom instruction…

A study investigated the effect of cultural background on reading comprehension, specifically examining content knowledge (schemata) and overall familiarity with the setting. It tested the hypothesis that when a setting is familiar to readers, the text will be most readable, and will yield the shortest time to read, the best comprehension, and the…

Emphasizing the need for realistic tasks in studying the interaction of readers with text, this report first suggests current problems with research on interactive reading and pedagogical prescriptions on comprehension. It then presents a checklist of reader, text, and task characteristics that should be considered in reader-text studies,…

The investigation involved a comprehensive descriptive analysis of the reading and writing behavior of 13 upper elementary level learning disabled students. Data were collected on student responses to 11 language tasks, including drawing; forming letters, numbers, and their names; being read to; reading; and answering questions about reading and…

To examine the nature of forward saccadic eye movements in reading, eye movement records were collected from college students as they read a short passage. Forward saccades from this data set were analyzed to determine factors influencing the likelihood of any given letter in the text being the recipient of the next fixation. Data indicated that…

To characterize basic processes of reading comprehension, this report focuses on how the reader's schemata, or knowledge already stored in memory, function in the process of interpreting new information and allowing it to enter and become a part of the knowledge store. The paper first traces the historical antecedents of schema theory, then…

Noting that current cognitive theories focus on the belief that knowledge is an organized collection of long-term structures upon which various processing mechanisms operate, this paper argues that mental functioning may be more readily characterized if the idea of abstract long-term associations and structures is abandoned. It proposes a model of…