The extent to which variables from a previous study (P. Mosenthal, 1996) on document processing influenced difficulty on 165 tasks from the pose scales of five national adult literacy scales was studied. Three process variables accounted for 78% of the variance when prose task difficulty was defined using level scores. Implications for computer…

It is a surprising fact that a student of speech can compete in prose, poetry, drama, and program oral interpretation without ever needing to develop two characters, without ever needing to establish two separate focal points in the same piece, and without ever learning to adapt to a new style of writing. This can be done if the student simply…

Examination was made of subject-generated as compared to experimenter-provided underlining of sentences that were least or most important to the overall structure of the passage presented. Additionally, some readers were instructed to underline any one sentence per paragraph, while others were asked simply to read the passage. (Author/BJG)

The effect of passage illustration training on reading comprehension in third and fourth graders is examined. Results show that standardized test scores were not improved due to this training. (Author/DEP)

The results of the study show that illustrations combined with aural stimuli facilitate the learning of prose among six year old students when the choice of objects used in the illustration is not left to the child. (Author/DEP)

College students differing in verbal ability read and evaluated their comprehension of expository passages. Three different types of problems were embedded within the passages to provide opportunities for students to reveal the use of different standards of evaluation. Half of the subjects were informed that they should use three particular…

Defining mathemagenics as adjunct aids that can be used in textual situations to enhance learning, this paper places a new perspective on mathemagenics research as well as on practical considerations derived from that research. Specifically, the paper addresses two questions: (1) Which explanatory concepts--degree of processing, selective…

Prior knowledge of the content of a passage should reduce the effort required to encode the passage, and facilitate its recall. The results of two experiments on the effects of prior knowledge upon comprehension of simple technical prose are presented. The procedure was to collect ratings of the amount of prior knowledge for individual passage…

Separated into 3 sections, this bibliography covers literature, drama, prose, and poetry (from 1965 to 1972) pertaining to Chicanos and La Raza. To obtain this material, all Chicano journals, newspapers, bulletins, and newsletters published in the Southwest were reviewed. Topics range from police brutality to the Vietnam War. The appendix gives…

This report examines the theory that when people understand a text, they create a complex scenario (or model) within which the events described might plausibly occur. In order to study construction and revision of such models, five subjects were given difficult-to-understand texts, and were later asked to discuss the processing they went through…

Ten graduate English majors responded to 21 samples of literary discourse chosen to represent Kinneavy's (1971) categories; the selections contained a total of 513 cloze situations. This paper reports the results of an analysis of the clues which the readers reported using when they correctly completed the clozed items. A 14-category…

Ten Graduate English majors responded to 21 samples of literary discourse chosen to represent Kinneavy's (1971) categories; the selections contained a total of 513 cloze situations. Only exact replacement of the deleted nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs was scored as correct. Analysis of results indicated that replacement in poetry was…

Contrary to expectation, subjects given a passage with neither paragraph cues nor an advance organizer recalled better than subjects given paragraph cues but no advance organizer. (RB)

The patterning of recall of linguistic subunits was found to be strongly related to the semantic dimensions of abstractness-concreteness, specificity of denotation, comprehensibility, and interest. (Author/BJG)

Examines the effect of scattering in the instructional text various information elements for a given learning goal and if the retention of that goal relevant element is affected by the presence of elements that cannot be found in the text. (Author/DEP)