To establish the joint effects of the orienting factors of structure, learning objectives, and time on the recall of the content of a prose passage, an experiment involving 108 college students was conducted. The study combined two levels of structure (ideationally high and ideationally low) with three conditions of objectives (ideationally high,…

Two studies were conducted to find correlates of personality or cognitive style that were exemplified in differences in recall of semantic information from text. In both studies the texts were analyzed for the pattern of subordination, or hierarchy, of the semantic information that was contained in the passages using a method described by Meyer.…

Brown and Barclay (1976) trained educable retarded children to use either of two memory search strategies, Anticipation or Rehearsal, involving a self-checking component. Following the training, both their free recall performance and their ability to estimate their readiness for a recall test improved significantly. In the present research, the…

Three known methodological approaches were investigated as to their within-test correlative support in the measurement of a phenomena called imagery. Based on these methodologies, repeated dichotomization of subjects into high and low visualizers was significantly consistent. Moreover, self-reported ratings of imagery vividness of prose were…

Concerned with books which enrich and preserve a child's wonder and faith, this publication explores the fanciful literature which communicates with the "inner child." Chapters include (1) "The Writers of These Books," (who have a childlike quality about themselves which sets them apart from their fellow writers); (2) "How These Books Are Written"…

This bulletin presents news and opinions of the staff of Project Brave of the St. John Valley in northern Maine. This issue contains selections of French prose and poetry written within the cultural context of the St. John Valley around Madawaska. (SK)

A fictional story was written in three versions: (1) traditional prose of 1,620 words, (2) medium telegraphic form of 947 words, and (3) highly condensed telegraphic form of 455 words. Two hundred and ten braille readers from grades 6 to 9 were assigned to one of the three treatment versions. Nine groups were formed on the basis of comparable age,…

This study undertook to determine (1) whether teaching sixth grade children elements of style would increase their pleasure in listening to "The Hobbit," (2) whether children who learned the most about style would respond the most positively to Tolkien's style, and (3) what children's preferences would be for selected examples of Tolkien's style.…

This handbook was planned to help teachers initiate better writing experiences. It provides ideas to give pupils satisfying and challenging activities. Samples of creative writing introduce each new section. The document has 11 sections; these are: (1) Introduction, (2) Guiding Creative Writing, (3) Areas for Creative Writing, (4) Motivating the…

The purpose of this manual is to identify and characterize reading abilities that seem necessary and appropriate to the comprehension of prose fiction and to stimulate reflection on matters concerning classroom instruction in these abilities. The focus of the manual is upon those concepts and generalizations which can be useful to the classroom…

Thirty-one third-grade students participated in an investigation of the possibility of training or improving intrasentence organizational skills in the context of a sentence anagram task. Sentence-anagram organizational training was conducted on an individual basis with the 16 students in the experimental group. A sentence-anagram posttest was…

The effect of variations in the organization of information and in contextual features upon comprehension of prose was tested using four tasks. Organization was varied to contrast hierarchical information structures and list information structures, and to test the effect of linking the structural components of the passage into a conceptual…

The effect of supplementary questions on learning from textual materials was investigated in a sample of 94 college juniors. Each subject was given a 1,500-word passage describing the concept of measurement. One treatment group was asked to identify characteristics of the concept; another was asked to identify examples from the text; a third…

This book is based on the York Computer Inventory of Prose Style, which seeks to provide a quantitative description of the syntactic characteristics of the literary language of specific authors over the last 400 years. After a brief theoretical introduction and a description of texts and sampling procedures, the discussion turns to specific…