Reports on the findings of a survey of over 450 children (ages 7 through 9) in southwest England exploring aspects of their views about and experience of reading. Provides insight into what children read and what influences their choice of reading and response to reading. (HB)

Investigates the phenomenon of topic shift (sentences initiating a new topic are given additional processing time by skilled readers). Finds adults showed a proportionately greater effect than fifth graders when more difficult expository texts were used but not with easy narratives. Finds that paragraph marking did not influence the processing of…

Three experiments on vowel decoding involving primary school children partially tested an interactive model of reading acquisition. The model suggests that children begin learning to read by establishing orthographic recognition units for words that have phonological underpinning that is initially at the onset-rime level but that becomes…

Provides an overview of "ElectroText," a program to develop electronically enhanced versions of short stories for use in middle school language arts programs for at-risk students. Describes the setting and instructional context, the strategies used to gather information about what students did when they read in a hypertext environment,…

Examines the behaviors of children and their teachers across repeated readings of the same text across several Reading Recovery lessons. Finds increased monitoring, error detection, self-correction, and fluency. Finds that teacher interventions decreased and changed in substantive ways. (RS)

Examines individual literary-response styles of several first- or second-grade children by analyzing their talk about books. Finds five types of responses (analytical, intertextual, personalizing, transparent, and performative responses). Discusses the discernible differences and unique perspectives in at least some children's individual literary…

Examines the potential of online methods for hypermedia research that allow the recording, analysis, and interpretation of learner/hypermedia interaction. Discusses discourse comprehension research, comprehension of printed text, reading time, verbal protocols, event-related potentials, and interaction protocols in hypermedia research. Contains 56…

Four experiments examined influence of task demands on 5- to 9-year olds' and adults' reading strategy. Results showed that less-skilled readers predominantly used simple grapheme-phoneme-level correspondences in reading isolated unfamiliar items. Skilled readers more likely adopted an analogy strategy. The "clue word" technique yielded…

Uses case alteration (cAse ALteRaTiOn) to investigate effects of first-language (L1) orthographic characteristics on word recognition in English as a second language (ESL). Finds magnitude of case alteration effect for naming tasks was significantly larger for ESL participants whose L1 was not alphabetic. Suggests that L1 orthographic features…

Five experiments used self-paced reading time to examine the ways in which complex noun phrases influence the interpretation of referentially dependent expressions. Results indicate that the entity introduced by a major constituent of a sentence is more accessible as a referent than the entities introduced by component noun phrases. (Author/VWL)

Investigated visual word recognition of first- through fifth-graders. Found that the "viewing position effect" typically seen in skilled readers and visual field asymmetries in recognizing individual letters in words emerged early at the end of the first year of reading instruction. Noted that findings support the view that basic reading…

Because of the universal, phonological nature of writing systems, functional proficiency in decoding is essential if a child is to become literate. This is the heart of the problem for many dyslexics and many other disabled readers. The whole-language approach that eschews decoding is inappropriate in light of this fact. (MSE)

This tribute to Samuel Kirk, an early leader in the field of learning disabilities, describes his prominent achievements in reading instruction, including research in remedial reading and identification of reading instruction principles such as stages of reading development, importance of prereading abilities, and the need for explicit, systematic…

Recent advances in cross-language psycholinguistics provide reading researchers with both the models and the tools needed to investigate the syntactic processing of second-language (L2) readers. In this study, 48 first-language and 48 highly fluent L2 French readers read sentences containing constructions that do not exist in English, pre-verbal…

Analyzes authentic documents in hypertext in light of reading research and proposes solutions to two potential areas of difficulty. The techniques discussed can help students overcome obstacles to reading comprehension. (Author/VWL)