The hypothesis that pragmatic inferences presented in text are taken for granted, superficially processed, and not stably or enduringly represented in memory was investigated. Stories were read which in some conditions contained information vitiating the implicational force of explicit inferences. The vitiating information was presented either…

The ten essays in this collection are concerned with linguistic theory and with the inferences which can be drawn from it and applied to the field of reading. Major sections deal with grammar, phonology, sociolinguistics, pragmatics, and the ethnography of speaking. In each case there is an attempt both to discuss recent developments within the…

Written responses to comprehension exercises related to basal reading materials were collected from 23 first graders and rated on a scale extending from no comprehension to application or extension of information beyond the story. Results indicated that most first graders in the group were able to answer detail questions but were unable to…

It is important in beginning reading instruction to let the child guess at unknown words, allowing the context to provide feedback. (JH)

From a special report, "What's New in Curriculum."

Competing views of written texts, of the process of writing, and of the purposes of the scholarly investigation of written discourse appear inherently at odds. Today composition theory is often demeaned as being only pedagogical while literary study is granted the status of a self-fulfilling academic pursuit. What is needed is a model or matrix…

Written primarily for teachers of elderly students and for elderly readers, this manual provides information about the elderly reader, about language, and about the reading process itself. The first chapter contains a review of current research on elderly readers that provides information about the materials they like to read, the materials they…

Designed to provide an exchange of ideas about children's reading comprehension, this book has gathered insights and perspectives from both educators and psychologists concerning the comprehension process. The first section of the book consists of three chapters devoted to literature reviews, each dealing with an aspect of comprehension. Specific…

The past 20 years of research into the efficacy of advance organizers has resulted in little empirical support for their use. A primary reason for this lack of strong support is the absence of true objective descriptions and definitions of the organizers used and the concomitant poor control over their derivation and construction. This deficiency…

Based upon a theory of intelligence proposed by Alfred Binet, this paper describes a cognitive process approach to poetry instruction. After discussing the suitability of the study of poetry as a means of enhancing students' reading comprehension, the paper summarizes Binet's theory, which distinguishes four successive intellectual operations: (1)…

This report argues that the Mean Gaze Durations or eye movement records used by M. A. Just and P. A. Carpenter to develop a model of reading comprehension are an inappropriate measure of processing time. An alternative approach called Read to Right of Gaze (RRG-1), which assumes that more than one word can be read during a fixation, is recommended…

Reading is a process of forming and evaluating hypotheses to account for the data in a text. Because of its complexity, the task of reading requires strategies for controlling the proliferation of hypotheses. Four of these strategies are (1) jumping to conclusions, (2) maintaining inertia (refusing to abandon a hypothesis in spite of contradictory…