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…

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 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…

Comprehension is seen as involving meaningful communication between author and reader. Different degrees of comprehension such as literal comprehension, evaluation, reorganization, and reaction are discussed, and experience, intelligence, language development, and decoding skills are noted as important factors which influence reading…

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…

A review of research on factors involved in general reading ability and reading in the content areas is presented. In the primary grades, reading comprehension appears to be a specific factor dependent on instructional conditions. During the intermediate grades, common factors emerge and tend to integrate at a more central response level and…

To explore the possibility that the tendency to cluster during free recall reflects organizational processes that are central to the attainment of certain reading skills, 32 mentally handicapped subjects were asked to recall 20 words from four conceptual categories on four consecutive trials. For one group the words were presented in random order…

A high versus low rationale approach in teaching reading to grade-7 students was tested. The high rationale included using a traditional basal series approach that emphasized the ability to identify "the reasons why of how to read" through rules or formulas. The low rationale approach deemphasized rules and formulas except as the need…

An investigation was conducted to determine whether differing schedules of reading practice had a significant effect on the reading achievement of male college students enrolled in a developmental reading course. Subjects were 80 male students at Central State College, Edmond, Oklahoma. Pretest and post-test results were compared. The Nelson-Denny…