The concepts of reading held by students in grades one through eight are reported on in this paper. Over 1600 children were individually interviewed to obtain answers to the following three questions: What is reading? What do you do when you read? And What would you tell someone reading is if that person were just beginning? The findings reveal…

Research findings concerned with the relationship between the child's oral language behavior and learning to read are described. A cognitive-biological approach to the child's perceptual system development is taken, and data are presented to support both the developmental point of view of language development and the point of view that the child…

The convergence technique developed by Carrese and Baker is described, and an application to reading of this research technique is made. The use of the convergence technique includes (1) a planning session which delineates the final goal of the program, the intermediate goals and their sequence for achievement of the final goal, and research and…

Possibilities for change and innovations due to technological and intellectual advancement are viewed as they might occur in the seventies. (1) Information storage by microphotography and computer will make possible greater collections in extremely small physical spaces. (2) Biological and biochemical advances will bring greater understanding of…

The oral reading miscues of 18 proficient readers, six each from grades 2, 4, and 6, were divided into those which did not change syntactic structure (nontransformation miscues) and those which did (retransformation miscues) and were analyzed through the use of the Goodman Taxonomy of Reading Miscues. The two groups of miscues were compared with…

The disagreement on terminology used to describe reading difficulties and to classify reading underachievers is illustrated. Some of the research findings on physical, intellectual, emotional, and educational factors which cause reading difficulty are described, with emphasis on replying to questions asked by parents and on clarifying some…

The role and importance of time was stressed as a key factor in an alternative theoretical viewpoint to the classic reading theory, which suggests that speed and comprehension are the two important dimensions of reading. Noting newer language processing models which detail the multiple interacting systems operating across time during the…

Little research has been done to explain just why words are recognized more easily than letters alone; although, this phenomenon has been accepted widely by educators. Therefore, a model of the processes involved in word recognition and suggestions concerning how these processes can be put to use in reading instruction are presented. The model…

This study examined the adaptability of reading rate to passage difficulty under different conditions of task-induced processing. Sixteen experimental passages varying in subject matter and ranging from 85 to 171 words were selected from a set of 32 texts rated for comprehensibility. The eight easiest and eight hardest texts were selected. Another…

This current annual report describes the progress made in the following aspects of the organizational plan; the identification of a model of reading which includes a description of subskills that may be present in skilled readers and are acquired by most normal readers, the construction of criterion referenced tests to measure each of these…

The cognitive clarity theory may be stated quite simply and briefly: (1) Learning to read involved applying general intellectual abilities to the task. (2) Reading is usually a silent activity, and there are very few outward signs of what the behavior involves. (3) Children do not know the basic concepts involved in thinking about the tasks of…

The purpose of this paper was to propose a theoretical description of the print reading process based on Piagetian concepts of mental functioning and to explore implications for educators which are compatible with such a theory. The methodology employed proceeds from a general explanation of mental functioning to one particular form, that of print…

The relationship between specific inference as measured by a Cloze Test and broad inference as measured by a Means-End Test was investigated. Subjects were 61 New York policemen enrolled in a communication skills course at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The relationship between specific inference and broad inference, specific inference and…

Reading has been viewed both as a product and as a process. The product view of reading is generally associated with static information produced by testing techniques. A major difficulty with the product view seems to be that reading is treated as though it is stopped in time, captured in the static scores of tests. This feature of the product…

Assuming that although the pre-operational child generates syntactic utterances, it cannot be inferred that he can comprehend the process of analyzing or synthesizing words or utterances as specimens, it would follow that trying to teach pre-operational children to read by decomposing words or sentences, on the assumption that words and the…