The effects of pictorial illustrations on memory for text were studied in 144 college students. Two experiments indicated that illustrations serve a supplementary function; adjunct pictures alone, without special processing instructions, do not help learners encode information that is not normally encoded in the first place. (SLD)

Measures of working memory capacity and measures of word knowledge were used as predictors of three measures of reading skills in 95 undergraduates. Vocabulary size and speed of accessing it were independent of word knowledge. Reading comprehension, reading speed, and text inferencing ability were independent measures of reading skill. (SLD)

Seventy-seven college students took notes, answered inserted conceptual "pre-questions," or did both while listening to a factual passage. Interspersed questions produced deeper and more elaborate note-taking that influenced recall as well. Note-taking alone was more shallow. Overt review of notes or questions aided recall. (SLD)

Forty-eight third- and 48 fifth-graders' ability to monitor comprehension was measured with the error detection paradigm. Some analyses excluded 23 third- and 14 fifth-graders. Cognitively-reflective and impulsive children--distinguished via the Matching Familiar Figures Test--differed significantly on their ability to identify inconsistencies.…

The developing relationship between children's metacognition and reading comprehension was examined for 87 third and 84 fifth graders. Students using the experimental curriculum--Informed Strategies for Learning--made significant gains in metacognition and the use of reading strategies when compared with control students. (TJH)

Introduces teachers to the development and use of story maps as a tool for promoting reading comprehension. Presents a definition and review of story map research. Explains how to construct story maps, and offers suggestions for starting story map instruction. Provides variations on the use of story maps. (MG)

The study compared scores of 2 groups of hearing-impaired students ages 5 to 12 years on a literacy battery. Subjects (n=73) were receiving instruction which either completely encoded spoken English or incompletely encoded spoken English. Those receiving completely encoded English instruction tended to score higher on achievement tests especially…

Discusses theories of the transfer of teaching based on the theory of common elements and the cognitive theory of elements and mechanisms. Highlights include inferential reasoning; mental models; memory and comprehension; and future directions, including theory development, metrics of transfer distance, psychological and educational research, and…

Examines previous research on extensive reading, and describes an experiment comparing the improvement of reading comprehension by Japanese college freshmen taught by either a skills-based or extensive reading procedure. Results suggest that extensive reading may be at least as effective as skills building, with the important advantage that it is…

A review of the literature on lecture notetaking delineates research concerning learning from native-language (L1) lectures as a function of L1 notetaking, outlines accepted axioms of good notetaking, and suggests continued research to assess the utility of these axioms and to explore further second-language lecture information processing.…

Examines interactions between 48 mothers and their two- , three-and-a-half-, and five-year-old children during book reading sessions. Formal reading and interchange about story content increased with age and book familiarity, while labelling decreased with age and book familiarity. (RJC)

Discusses the use of mapping to help learning disabled students unlock the historical narrative in their history textbooks. Presents one way to map the narrative structure or grammar of a history text, including suggestions on how to effectively model and motivate students. (GEA)

Examines the effects of headings and adjunct questions embedded in expository text on the delayed multiple-choice test performance of college students. Finds that headings may promote the organization of passage information so as to increase its general availability, while the overall effect of adjunct questions was not significant. (MM)

Noun and verb comprehension of 11 children with cerebral palsy or other motor impairments was assessed by presenting a linguistic stimulus and determining whether the child watched a video event that matched or did not match the stimulus. Subjects, aged 2-6, watched the match significantly more, especially when dynamic visual stimuli were…

Examines how paraphrasing, formulating questions, comparing and contrasting, and completing matching exercises on worksheets affect recall of information. Concludes that the quality of inferences differed according to the writing task, with question writing and compare-contrast tasks generating more new information, while question writing results…