Investigates the effects of teaching text-specific vocabulary on eighth graders' comprehension of expository text and their ability to make causal connections. Finds that vocabulary instruction prior to reading improves comprehension, regardless of the student's reading ability and that text-specific vocabulary instruction improves subjects'…

Investigates the basis of short-term memory deficits for children with reading disability and explores the origin of developmental verbal memory span increases. Finds a strong relationship between efficiency of phonological processes and capacity of verbal memory but no relationship between phonological processing and nonverbal memory. (RS)

Examines a broad spectrum of college students' understanding of reading. Finds that students of lower ability characterized good readers as those who read quickly and often, and they characterized the reading process as a passive activity; more capable readers viewed reading as an interactive process. (RS)

Examines sex inequalities in both text and pictures of award-winning children's books from 1972 through 1997. Compares findings with a study examining award-winning children's books from 1940 to 1971. Finds few gains in representation of females, and finds that the decade of the 1950's remains that with the highest representation of females in…

Offers overviews of two eras of literacy research over the past 20 years that symbolize alternative perspectives on knowledge. Considers internal and external conditions, as well as the metaphors for and principles of knowledge that emerged. Explores rival epistemological stances that survived or thrived. Describes the seeds of a new…

Investigates profiles of mature adult readers' who are persuaded by what they read, and what role a reader's educational level plays in the persuasion process. Finds that, for the most part, readers with moderate but favorable stances, moderate to high interest in the topic, and at least moderate levels of perceived or demonstrated knowledge were…

Gives background information on the journal's mini-series on reading assessment and intervention. States that over the past decade cognitive psychologists have learned that reading disabilities are primarily language-related disorders and neuropsychologists have advanced ideas on reading process. The mini-series seeks positive and significant…

Presents the selective synthesis of instructional research with children and adolescents with learning disabilities, analyzing studies across instructional domain, sample characteristics, intervention parameters, and sampling procedures. Synthesis indicates that reading is the most researched domain, and intervention studies that produce the…

Indicates a facilitation in undergraduate students' reading time for congruent text marking for both cohesion and textual structure that manifested itself at different points in the sentence. Suggests that readers are highly sensitive to coherence marking devices, and strictly local coherence models cannot completely account for what readers are…

Examines the relationship of second-language-learning patterns and experience to the acquisition of automatized processing skills in the morphological domain. Finds that Russian-speaking undergraduate students were significantly less accurate and slower than the English-speaking students at a naming task, and less impaired by experimental…

Reviews both the quantitative and qualitative findings of 17 programs/studies in volunteer reading. Finds that only 3 of the programs had an evaluation comparing equivalent treatment and comparison groups to determine the effectiveness of the programs. Indicates that volunteers can be successful if they are trained and follow specific guidelines.…

Examines changes in four young adolescent boys' awareness of how masculinity constructs and is constructed by texts. Questions how critical literacy activities within homeschooling setting sustain or transform the boys' awareness of gendered identities and inequities in texts. Highlights impact of power relations within and among local and…

Describes the home and school literacy experiences of a group of children with severe motor and speech disabilities in order to examine the relationship between these experiences and reading and spelling abilities in this population. Finds that home literacy experiences in the groups studied at best had a marginal influence on reading development.…

Suggests two models of how readers create bridging inferences to resolve signals to textual cohesion. Evaluates reading times, verification accuracy, verification latency, and regressive eye fixations to support the model which views bridges as the result of a form of deduction in which the reader tacitly establishes premises that provide rational…

This rejoinder to a critique of the authors' research on speech perception deficits in poor readers answers the specific criticisms and reaffirms their conclusion that the difficulty some poor readers have with rapid /ba/-/da/ discrimination does not stem from difficulty in discriminating the rapid spectral transitions at stop-vowel syllable…