College students wrote summaries of short passages to assess their ability to identify important information. Naive summaries judged as "better" contained more major semantic roles, such as agent, than did summaries judged "not as good". Students wrote better summaries when instructed to use major semantic roles within the passage. (Author/RD)

Kindergarten and first-grade children listened to a narrative passage under one of five experimental conditions. Prelearning imagery instructions did not facilitate subsequent recall of story information. Similarly intermittently provided pictures did not produce recall gains for unpictured story information, but had a positive effect on recall of…

Seven experiments investigated adults' knowledge of routine activities (e.g., eating in a restaurant) and how that knowledge is organized and used to understand and remember narrative texts. "Script" denotes these action stereotypes; the role of script knowledge in text memory is discussed, as is the relation of scripts to schema memory.…

The relation between imagery-assisted prose recall and field independence was found to be significantly stronger than the relation between control recall and field independence for third graders, but not for kindergartners. (Author)

The author suggests that the preconscious is the true locus of significant prose because of its greater amount of freedom to gather, compare, and rearrange ideas, and that the ultimate challenge to teachers of composition is to give freedom to their students' preconscious processes. (KC)

Research from four subareas of prose learning (advance organizers, response modes, objectives, and inserted questions) is considered and weaknesses in the studies conducted are noted. Suggestions are advanced as to how researchers might profitably spend their energies in the future. (RC)

Two experiments study the effects of structure and content variables on memory and comprehension of prose passages. The first experiment tests the effects of systematically varying the amount of structure present in to-be-learned passages. The second experiment assesses the independent contributions of structure and content variables in…

The effects of asking 48 undergraduates to generate personal examples of target concepts on learning of psychological concepts from prose were evaluated. This elaboration activity produced a significant positive effect. Elaboration processes seemed to influence the transfer of concepts to problem-solving, especially for lower ability students.…

Evaluated contributions of age, presentation modality, task demand, and content structure to prose recall variation among adults. Tested 60 young and 60 older adults for recall of ideas in 641-word prose passage. Found recall for total number of idea units was significantly lower for older participants and for auditory presentation across both age…

A review of the empirical research literature on Social Stories[TM] is presented, including a descriptive review and single-subject meta-analysis of appropriate studies. Examination of data suggests the effects of Social Stories[TM] are highly variable. Interpretations of extant studies are frequently confounded by inadequate participant…

The effect of media presentations (oral, print, pictures, and combinations) on prose learning between high socioeconomic status white and low socioeconomic black children is compared and analyzed. (DEP)

The guide presents information on a creative writing course for verbally gifted senior high school students. Part I of the course consists of general exploration activities on literary forms: the journal, the poem, the short story, and a student selection from among such types as one-act plays, essays or by-lined articles, editorials, and TV (or…

Research has suggested that the two hemispheres of the brain serve specialized functions, with the most recent studies portraying the left hemisphere as processing information in a linear, serial, or sequential manner and the right hemisphere as processing information in a holistic, concrete, or visual mode. Although few systematic studies have…

Evidence from a variety of sources suggests that systematic differences can be found in the ratings given to student essays as a function not only of the student's skills but also of aspects of both the student's background and the background of the rater. Additionally, the nature of the prompt which provided the central theme of the essay might…

Portions of a corpus of modern American prose were analyzed for the occurrence of "man" and its compounds. The passages analyzed were written in 1961, and showed no effects of recent movements to "desex" language. Occurrences were classified as generic mixed, generic masculine, and specified masculine. The mean of instances per…