I continue here the long-standing discussion on the familiar topic of whether subconscious language acquisition is more powerful than conscious language learning, with a focus on vocabulary, adding recent studies as well as older ones I missed in previous publications on this topic (e.g. Krashen, 2004).

Inference is discussed as a factor in the derivation of non-explicit antecedents and referents for three types of discourse anaphora: definite pronouns, "one"-anaphora, and verb phrase ellipsis. This derivation process is seen as being part of the normal process of text-understanding. It is claimed that the use of non-explicit…

Reading researchers and theorists are sharply divided as to how meaning is obtained from the printed word. Three current explanations are that (1) meaning is accessed directly, without any intermediate processes; (2) meaning is accessed only through an intermediate phonemic stage; and (3) both direct access and phonemic mediation can occur. To…

Reading comprehension is an active inferential process. Three experiments are described in which the possibility was examined that highly probable inferences are drawn, even when they are unnecessary for comprehension. (Author/RM)

Investigates the influence of word meaning on lexical processing in children and adults. Examines developmental trends in lexical decisions for abstract and concrete words. Concludes that word meaning influences lexical processing in children but that there is a developmental shift in the kinds of semantic characteristics that are available for…

Two fundamental assumptions guide this survey of recent research on anaphora. The first is that anaphoric expressions do not refer to segments in a text or discourse, but to entities that are assumed to be in the language receiver's mind. The second assumption is that a text serves to suggest the referents for anaphora, as does the nonlinguistic…

Discusses four aspects of listening comprehension citing supportive research: (1) what is involved in listening comprehension, (2) whether it be taught, (3) how it is related to reading comprehension, and (4) what other factors affect listening comprehension. Provides recommendations for teaching. (HTH)

Two experiments were conducted to test how readers process unattended words in a display and how the semantic category of these flanking words affects response time. (Author/AM)

A study investigated children's understanding (3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-year-olds) of the different levels of meaning of the cognitive verb "know" as defined by the abstractness and conceptual difficulty hierarchy of W. S. Hall, E. K. Scholnick, and A. T. Hughes. Results indicated that cognitive verb knowledge increased with development and…

The assumption that "ideal" text grammars are valid descriptions of the schemata used by children to organize their recall of text was challenged in a study involving 150 elementary school children. The children, all with above-average reading ability, were classified as having one of three types of schemata: theme-initial (identifying…

Comprehensibility ratings and sentence-by-sentence reading times of three-sentence narratives (triples) were studied as a function of the coherence of a triple. In both experiments, reading times did not differ for first sentences, but were longer for third sentences of unrelated than for related triples. (Author/RM)

Three experiments were conducted to examine the relations between retrieval and encoding in a levels-of-processing framework. (Author/RM)

The purpose of these studies was to test the hypothesis that thematization affects the probability that a probe word will produce meaning-preserving recall of a sentence that is part of a discourse. Sentences were constructed along the lines of subject-verb-object and were presented in three experiments: free recall of isolated sentences, prompted…

The product of researchers' efforts to develop a computer processor which distinguishes between relevant and irrelevant information in the database, Spreading Activation Processor for Information Encoded in Network Structures (SAPIENS) exhibits (1) context sensitivity, (2) efficiency, (3) decreasing activation over time, (4) summation of…

Examines analysis of cohesion as an index of both social and cognitive factors. Oral language of reading disabled was studied and found to indicate some difficulties of the subjects when dealing with information under special social and cognitive conditions. (DF)