A sample of 12 recent and older sixth grade social studies textbooks was examined to determine their level of explicitness, one of the criteria used to determine the "friendliness" or comprehensibility of a text. Researchers randomly selected three samples--usually chapters--from each of the 12 textbooks. The Explication Inventory…

Methodological deficiencies inherent in expert-novice reading research make it impossible to draw inferences about curriculum change. First, comparisons of intact groups are often used as a basis for making causal inferences about how observed characteristics affect behaviors. While comparing different groups is not by itself a useless activity,…

A field study tested a teaching method to increase comprehension by instructing students about the nature of questions and the "art" of composing good comprehension questions. The eight guidelines on which the method was developed included (1) making students aware of the purpose of such questions; (2) explaining to students that there are three…

Noting that research indicating Newbery Medal books are not popular with elementary students in spite of their unquestioned superiority in plot, characterization, and style, a study examined the readability level of Newbery Medal winners from 1974 to 1986. Three readability formulas were used to assess readability: Gunning's Fog Index, Fry…

The writings of Nila Banton Smith, a lifelong teacher, administrator, and specialist in reading instruction, whose publications spanned the years from 1922 to her death in 1976, are listed. The 152 entries are divided into three types: (1) professional publications, designed to improve the profession of teaching reading; (2) instructional…

Two experiments investigated to what extent schema activation is involved in any facilitative effect that headings may have on multiple-choice test performance following the reading of a passage. In the first experiment, 1,116 college students read a 1,760-word passage on human sexuality with headings either present or absent. An analysis of the…

Using experimental narratives in which discourse order and event order were not confounded, a study investigated the role of global discourse organization on the comprehension of narrative texts. Subjects, 100 college students, listened to tape recorded passages representing five types of discourse organization: canonical, backward, flashback,…

Semiotics, the study of signs, is a relatively new and highly controversial area. Symbols, icons, and indexes represent the three types of signs. Semantics, pragmatics, and syntactics represent the three basic semiotic areas, with pragmatics having a growing influence in oral language and reading. A comprehensive view of curriculum is implicit in…

A study examined causal reasoning in the context of story recall and story production in young children. Subjects, 20 kindergarten and 20 first grade students matched according to I.Q. scores, parental demographics, and preschool experience, were read stories and asked to recall them and given the setting for a story and asked to complete it. The…

This article reviews research concerning the organizational, selective, and connective aspects of reading and then assesses the impact of constructivism on four reading-related issues in the United States: (1) readability of texts; (2) assessment of reading ability; (3) instruction in reading; and (4) conception of literacy. The article argues…

A study examined whether the morphological structure of words--that is to say, the analysis of words into prefixes, stems, and suffixes--plays a role in how words are represented in an individual's internal lexicon. Ninety-five students from a large midwestern university identified stem words, matched for length and individual frequency, which…

In order to determine the effectiveness of a reciprocal teaching procedure, a study examined the effects of instruction in metacognitive techniques on the reading comprehension of technical students. Subjects were 150 male students in a post-secondary occupational training program in diesel mechanics. A 4-part metacognitive process was taught and…

Issues in reading teacher education as well as other aspects of reading instruction are the focus of this yearbook. Titles of some of the articles and their authors are as follows: "Sampling Bias Limitations in Generalizations in Reporting Scores on Standardized and Criterion Referenced Reading Tests" (L. Carswell and W. White); "A Comparison of…

A study investigated whether students' abilities to solve verbal analogy problems can be increased through teacher-generated direct instruction and whether increased ability in solving verbal analogies is directly related to increased reading comprehension ability. Subjects, 90 children (30 from fourth, fifth, and sixth grades), participated in…

Proposing a shift in the locus of theoretical analysis of cognition, this paper argues that cognitive functioning may be more readily characterized without the mediation of long-term mental associations and structure. An account of cognition is proposed in which mental relations are transient functional relations, and in which psychological…