The present study evaluated the effectiveness of embedded headings, with and without instructions on their usage, as processing aids for text material. It was expected that the Instructions/Headings group would outperform both the Headings Only and Control (no instructions or headings) groups, and that the performance of the Headings Only group…

A discrete color naming paradigm was used in two experiments examining activation along orthographic and phonological dimensions in visual and auditory word recognition. Subjects were 80 college students who were presented with a prime word, either auditorally or visually, followed 200 milliseconds later by a target word printed in a color. The…

The purpose of this research project was to investigate the assumption of equivalent evaluative skills in good and poor readers. The first goal was to test whether in fact good and poor readers were equivalent in their evaluative skills when not constrained by the reading process. The second intent was to provide a reading condition in which good…

Three experiments examined children's ability to perceive two of the elements of textual cohesion--personal reference and conjunction. The first experiment investigated the ability of 76 eight-year-old children to process anaphora in order to distinguish those children who were becoming fluent readers from those who were not. The children were…

This monograph is the fourth in a series of semiannual reports of research related to reading in secondary schools. The five papers in the monograph are concerned with the pedagogical and research implications of reading comprehension. Specific topics dealt with include (1) a phenomenological perspective on the reading process, (2) the role of…

A study was conducted to determine which of three major cue systems (linguistic, cognitive, or extralinguistic) 146 subjects at the kindergarten, first grade and second grade levels used to reconstruct meaning when confronted with a reading task. Cue system utilization was related to four factors: modality (listening versus reading), reading…

To determine the degree of emphasis on phonics instruction necessary for beginning readers, a study was conducted involving five pairs of four-year-old monozygotic twins. Randomly selected twins from each pair were exposed to two different levels of phonics instruction. In one group, the reduced treatment group, only one sound equivalent per…

The reader has replaced the text as the central figure in the teaching of literature. Three techniques that psychologists and educational researchers believe produce better reading comprehension are: the concept of schemata, or the kind of mental outline a reader has when perceiving something; the acquisition or development of an appropriate…

After reviewing the information that teachers and other decision makers need to have about student achievement and some recent advances in the theory and practice of reading assessment, the author makes a number of recommendations for improving assessment programs. These include: do less massive, broad-band testing, but improve the reliability and…

In this analysis of prior knowledge and bilingual literacy, it is suggested that the basis upon which cognitive decisions are made and nonvisual inferences are drawn comes from the background knowledge that the reader possesses as tacit or prior knowledge. It is claimed that the only model that can account for the pluralistic nature of language is…

Previous research has demonstrated that readers utilize orthographic structure in their perceptual recognition of letter strings. Two experiments were conducted to assess whether this utilization varied with reading ability. Anagrams of words were made to create strings that orthogonally combined high and low single letter positional frequency and…

This paper examines the relationship between beginning reading and cognitive development and reviews some of the research conducted so far. It is noted that children learning to read may be in various stages of cognitive development, some at a preoperation stage, some at a concrete operation stage, and some at a transition stage. Instructional…

A study was undertaken to measure the effect on reading comprehension of forcing attention to different levels of analysis. The assumption was that since texts can be analyzed at a variety of levels, comprehension requires a basic strategic coordination of processing activities. Forty second grade, fifth grade, and college students read and…

ONE OF THE INTERNATIONAL READING ASSOCIATION'S ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY SERIES IS CONCERNED WITH THE APPLICATION OF LINGUISTICS TO READING INSTRUCTION AND WAS PREPARED TO SERVE A WIDE RANGE OF USERS. IT CONTAINS ABOUT 100 CITATIONS OF BOOKS, RESEARCH REPORTS, DOCTORAL DISSERTATIONS, AND ARTICLES FROM PERIODICALS, YEARBOOKS, AND CONFERENCE…

To achieve its purpose, an initial teaching orthography (i.t.o.) should be as simple in form and substance as possible; it should be phonemic rather than phonetic. The 40 sounds distinguished by Pitmanic shorthand and some provision for schwa can serve as a basic code. The symbols can be derived from either of two major sources--standardizing the…