A study examined the effects of pictorial and verbal illustrations on the initial learning and long term retention of written instruction. Subjects were eighth and ninth grade students randomly assigned to one of two text conditions (literal or analogous instructions) under one of four pictorial conditions (no picture, functional drawing,…

Part of a research project designed to develop a theory of the cognitive processes involved in skilled reading by the analysis of the location and duration of eye fixations, this paper concentrates on how eye fixations can be used to determine when encoding, lexical access, parsing, and integration processes are executed and how they are affected…

A group of 24 14-year-old students were presented with sets of algebra tasks using the Leeds Modelling System (LMS), a computer-based modeling system. Four months later, these same students were given a paper-and-pencil test which covered comparable tasks set by LMS. In addition, certain students were given detailed diagnostic interviews. A…

This paper reports the results obtained with a group of 24 14-year-old students when presented with a set of algebra tasks by the Leeds Modelling System (LMS). These same students were given a comparable paper-and-pencil test and detailed interviews some 4 months later. The latter studies uncovered several kinds of student misunderstanding that…

Directed reading activities found in commercially produced instructional materials usually contain information that is aimed at helping children understand the story as well as helping them to develop other skills. To test the effectiveness of both establishing background knowledge and directing children toward central story content, two…

This experiment was designed to better understand the effects of individual differences, intent to learn, and stimulus familiarity on frequency judgment accuracy. Half of the participants in the study heard popular songs, and the other half listened to unfamiliar songs. Participants were subdivided into three more groups, introducing the "intent…

The difficulty of computer programming and other design tasks is a function of the multiple abstractions that combine to form a program's meaning. Thus, comprehension of the final form of a program design, the program text, involves retrieving multiple sets of relationships between parts. The research presented here addresses which, if any,…

The papers in this volume were initially presented at a seminar on the development of reading comprehension, which explored basic research and the teaching of reading comprehenison. Researchers in cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics and experts in curriculum design in reading gave presentations and reacted to one another's ideas. Each…

This paper provides information on the use of referential communication tasks (tasks that structure speaking and listening behaviors so that participants need to interact to achieve accurate comprehension) in evaluating students' comprehension and listening skills. An introduction discusses interactive listening and the referential communication…

The application of computer technology to reading research has made it possible to study the perceptual processes that take place as people read with a level of precision never before attainable. This computer assisted research has revealed that where the eyes go for fixations is of significance to normal reading and that during each fixation only…

A study investigated the effect of Frank O'Hare's "Sentencecraft" sentence combining program on the written syntactic skills, reading comprehension level, and speed of average ability ninth-grade students. The sample consisted of 75 experimental group students and 68 control group students. Following a pretest, the experimental group…

A study examined the relationships between retelling--an indicator of reading comprehension obtained through a student's oral recall of a story--and three other indicators of reading comprehension representing various viewpoints in comprehension measurement: miscues, a post oral-reading cloze test, and a passage dependent multiple choice test.…

A study examined the concept of the universality or the cultural specificity of the ideal story structure using the J. M. Mandler and N. S. Johnson story grammar. Specifically, the study tested the effect of two different story structures, one a conventional fairy tale and the other a Cree Indian narrative, on the recall of Cree Indian children.…

A model of cognitive operations that children use in reading and comprehending a sentence was tested by using Sternberg's independent-process analysis on 64 second and fifth graders who were either high- or low-ability readers. Three specific component processes were examined: a decoding process, a word meaning process, and a comprehension…

This study indicates that the way in which stories are presented to children (verbal versus pictorial) makes little or no difference in the children's comprehension or recall of the stories. Ninety-six kindergarten and second grade children either looked at a series of pictures (and were told they formed a story) or listened to the story through a…