Reviews studies that have explicitly investigated the "seductive detail" effect (in which a reader's attention is diverted toward the interesting but unimportant seductive details and away from the uninteresting but important main ideas). Concludes that these studies do not provide convincing evidence for the existence of the effect.…

Argues that an article by E. Goetz and M. Sadoski in the same issue of this journal is not only inaccurate in its criticisms but is inconsistent in its claims relevant to the research on the memorability of highly interesting but unimportant textual content, also known as "seductive details." (RS)

Replies to another article in the same issue of this journal concerning research on "seductive details" (in which a reader's attention is diverted toward the interesting but unimportant seductive details and away from the uninteresting but important main ideas). Reasserts that there is insufficient evidence to convict seductive details…

Describes a guessing game called "Sentencing," which can be played with students from third grade through high school. It develops students' abilities to use semantic, syntactic, and graphophonic cues and also allows teachers to view the metacognitive strategies of their students. (SR)

Explores Laura Ingalls Wilder's "Little House" books as a series of seven books of increasing complexity, to cast light on the processes of reading development. Examines ways Wilder used to help her reader develop. (SR)

Inaugurates this column's topic for the year: document strategy procedures and ways to teach them. Argues that knowledge of document structures allows for better knowledge of the cognitive steps and metacognitive strategies in document processing. (SR)

Presents the third part of a six-part series in which the authors respond to a ninth grader's first impressions of "Reel One," a poem by Adrien Stoutenburg. Urges readers to participate by reading the student's impressions and reflecting on the student's interpretations. (MM)

Improving employee reading skills requires attention to three elements: speed, accuracy, and comprehension. Reading efficiency can be enhanced by teaching various styles: surveying, skimming, scanning, intensive reading, and critical reading. (SK)

Reviews document strategies called "locate tasks." Discusses "cycle tasks," tasks requiring two or more locate tasks, repeating the known/need-to-know steps, thus cycling to earlier steps in the known/need-to-know procedure. (SR)

This article examines the effects of some of the testing procedures used in current second-language reading research on learners' performance on these tasks and suggests guidelines for developing future research instruments and classroom reading comprehension tests. (Contains 40 references.) (VWL)

Argues that the terms "active" and "passive" are commonly used (in conjunction with student behavior during reading) in a way that is misleading and unhelpful. (SR)

Seeks to identify difference between six proficient and less proficient college freshmen in their use of personal evocations and reflections in the reading transaction. Finds that, although proficient readers integrate textual cues and prior knowledge in a process of reflecting about stories and characters, less proficient readers seem to approach…

Presents the text of an account of the author's research. Notes that the text's four layers (scientific report, reflective analysis, personal history, and deliberative appeal) are each indispensable yet individually inadequate to the task. Considers the tensions among possible accounts of the research and what these tensions say about the reading…

Compares remedial readers to more proficient readers in their meaning-making processes during the reading of literary text. Reveals that the remedial readers spend a disproportionate amount of being out of "envisionments"--either attempting to step into one or failing to step in. (MG)

Investigates the kind of print-related knowledge that emergent readers must possess to learn to point to the words of a text as they recite it from memory (fingerpoint-reading) and to remember information about the print from this activity. Reveals that different types of print knowledge facilitate different aspects of fingerpoint-reading. (SR)