The development and use of item shells in the construction of a series of standardized tests of reading comprehension at the elementary school level are described. An item shell is an item that is devoid of specific content, but contains key words and a distinctive syntactic structure. The specific content of the item shell varies depending on the…

The ninth in a series of studies to improve the strategies that poor reading comprehenders use to study text began as a training study containing three components: strategies to be taught, instructional mode by which they would be taught, and the metacognitive environment for the instruction. After identifying four strategies that merited…

A new model of the revision process in written composition, based on the results of thinking aloud protocol studies, is presented in this report. The report begins by discussing earlier observations and theories of revision that establish four points: (1) there are large differences among writers in the amount of revising they do, (2) expert…

Children's reading comprehension of explicit, implicit, and metaphorical information was investigated to determine the effects of grade level and recall task type. After reading prose selections containing the three types of information, 40 second and 40 fifth grade students were assessed on either cued or free recall tasks. Their comprehension…

Theories of cognitive processing suggest specific effects result from different elaboration treatments. To test this assumption, 125 high school students were randomly assigned to read concept materials containing adjunct elaborations that varied by elaboration type (mnemonics, schematics, or metaphors) and presentation mode (verbal or visual). To…

Working on the assumption that poor comprehenders of reading cannot retrieve relevant information to provide a context for the understanding of new information, a study sought to gather some empirical data about the retrieval of information. It was hoped that these data would validate some aspects of J. R. Anderson's ACT theory of memory (that…

This is the final report on a research project that measured the effect of reading rate on accuracy and the efficiency of reading comprehension. At the outset of the project, existing research data were integrated into a comprehensive account called a "rauding theory," which interrelates reading ability, passage difficulty, reading time,…

Different kinds of basic knowledge and strategies necessary for comprehension are examined in three radically different domains: (1) the stories, (2) mathematical problems, and (3) electronic circuits. From analyzing the comprehension processes in these different domains, similarities have emerged in the role of planning knowledge and the…

Preservice elementary teachers' use of examples in recognizing and disproving invalid deductive arguments related to topics in elementary school mathematics was examined. Two forms of the Classroom Logic Test were developed, one multiple choice and one free response. Subjects were asked to judge the correctness of arguments and, if incorrect,…

Listening is a crucial element in the communication process. To date, however, research efforts have been unsuccessful in identifying the proper role that listening should play in the building of communication theory. To be a legitimate part of the communication process, listening must be placed in a conceptual framework similar to those found in…

There are many children, termed "perseverative," whose reading comprehension problems stem from the fact that they form hypotheses about the meaning of a text at the onset of reading, then fail to evaluate or modify those hypotheses on the basis of subsequent text findings. A study was undertaken to identify such readers and to explore…

Explanations for differences in reading proficiency should be constructed around an atlas of reading-related individual differences in cognition. Such an atlas should include well-documented "bottom-up", text-driven reading strategies and less thoroughly investigated "top-down", schema-driven reading strategies. Research…

A theory of textual processing signals--cues to guide the response of any reader to a narrative text--can be evolved from Gerald Prince's theory of reading interludes and William Labov's work on narrative evaluation. An examination of these signals in two personal experience narratives written by students in remedial and freshman writing courses…

A study investigated (1) the effectiveness of giving instructions to form mental images prior to reading a text and at the conclusion of the text, and (2) sex differences in the ability of below average readers to form mental images. Subjects were 47 sixth grade students who were below average readers. The subjects were randomly assigned, by sex,…

Controlling the rate of oral delivery in the second language classroom has been demonstrated as beneficial to the learner, whose information-processing capacity is an important factor in listening comprehension. Rate of information delivery can be controlled by limiting the actual rate of words per unit of time, or by maintaining content…