This report summarizes information presented in a technical report concerning the role of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension and is designed to be read by educators not directly involved in research themselves. It states that while an assessment of the number of meanings a reader knows enables a remarkably accurate prediction of an…

A formulated definition of the term dyslexia is proposed in this paper in order to clarify the semantical confusion which exists among both specialists and the general public. Dyslexia is explained as a generic term for severe and puzzling reading disability, found to be both acute (where reading-age lags 25 percent or more below mental age) and…

The author discounts the effects of currently promoted speed reading programs as resulting in short-term effectiveness and disregarding a consideration of what constitutes good reading at any speed. He claims that the types and levels of transformations and interpretations, verbal and nonverbal, that must go into good reading are not susceptible…

Topics and practices related to college reading instruction are discussed. Reading is seen as a skill which permeates the entire process of study. Speed reading techniques such as increasing eye span, ceasing vocalizations, and reading vertically down the page are criticized as hampering rather than facilitating the comprehension process. The most…

Previous work shows that skilled college level readers tend to apprehend words as wholes, whereas they tend to process random strings of letters as a series of individual letters. Subjects in the study were forced to process words and non-word strings both serially and under conditions which allowed simultaneous processing, and their performances…

The problems of modeling a process as complex as reading are discussed, including such factors as the lack of agreement surrounding definitions of modeling, varying levels of rigor within and between models, the disjunctive categories within which models fall, and the difficulty of synthesis across fields which employ very different technical…

In a model of the functioning of short term memory, the encoding of information for subsequent storage in long term memory is simulated. In the encoding process, semantically equivalent paragraphs are detected for recombination into a macro information unit. (HOD)

Theoretical and empirical perspectives are introduced in this article to support applications of Piaget's theory to reading acquisition. Research literature linking initial reading acquisition and Piaget's formulation are reviewed with regard to operational thought and process analysis of reading achievement, perception, and comprehension.…

Suggests ways in which psycholinguistics may be used to study how readers perceive and comprehend literary works. (DD)

Ability to recognize and understand figurative language is crucial to successful reading. (Author)

Describes the difficulties children face in learning the special language used to talk about reading and its relation to speech. (DD)

Continues discussion of Ronald Carter's Rauding Theory. (AA)

Suggests that the skill model reaches a dead end in the high school and that secondary programs can find a promising foundation in the psycholinguistic model of reading. (JM)

Fourth graders who were good readers (N=95) and poor readers (N=27) were given tests of syntactic competence, vocabulary, and auditory and reading comprehension. Scores on the auditory and reading comprehension tests were significantly correlated. Poor readers performed significantly poorer on the syntactic test, but results did not support the…

A case study of a proficient deaf student reading two versions of the same story (one syntactically more complex than the other) supports the notion that a firm semantic base enables processing at the syntactic as well as the semantic level. (Author/CL)