The purpose of this current research effort was to identify and validate the effectiveness of alternative learning strategies. Learners employing networking and interactive peer study substrategies achieved more than did no-treatment controls. Similarly, strategies-trained learners reported greater positive learning attitude changes than did…

Recent research projects have indicated that a majority of adolescent and adult students have not reached a formal level of cognitive functioning and must therefore be taught rhetorical modes such as comparison and classification. A study was constructed to investigate the cognitive skills development of average college freshmen and to test…

When 35 high school students read a short passage either with or without a meaningful context, those students who read the passage with a context recalled more of the passage. A think-aloud procedure revealed differences in processing during reading. Readers with a context relied more on prior knowledge to understand the text than did readers…

This paper presents a schema developed to investigated story recall in elementary school children, and describes the results of a study which tested the schema with first and fifth graders. The story schema, a theoretical model which formally defines the types of strategies, operations, and structures inherent in the processor of story…

The problem of this conference panel was to determine the interaction between the structural properties of text and the cognitive processes involved in comprehension. This panel report contains sections on the organization of the message in the communication system, the information readers derive from a message and how well they derive it, the…

An integrated learning strategy program emphasizing a connection technique employing questions and answers was developed and tested. Components were derived from a review of educational and psychological literature and from an analysis of responses to a learning-strategy inventory. Visual imagery and paraphrasing connection also were evaluated.…

Fifth-grade and college students in two experiments listened to tape-recorded sentences and completed tests of immediate recall. The first experiment investigated the effect of a listener's expectations upon his understanding of a sentence. Sometimes the "most probable" answer was not congruent with the "correct" answer, suggesting that the…

A study was designed to examine the contribution of intrinsic arousal (individual differences) and induced arousal to children's comprehension of film content with short- and long-term retention intervals. Intrinsic arousal was measured by a salivary response measure; induced arousal was manipulated by white auditory noise. The latter was…

This study developed prototype diagnostic and teaching materials to test logical reasoning ability in second, third, and fourth grade pupils. The testing procedure attempted to find the most difficult levels, along several dimensions, at which a child can use a logical rule. The materials dealt with the rule for "or" elimination and the rule for…

A search of experimental and theoretical literature and an analysis of professional textbooks, instructional materials, and published tests were carried out in order to (1) determine current concepts of reading comprehension deriving from experimental investigations, verbal statements, and models and (2) establish the extent to which these…

Indicates that low-reading ability students of teachers trained how to make decisions about when and how to explain the mental processing associated with using reading skills as strategies were more aware of lesson content and of the need to be strategic when reading and scored better on several measures of reading achievement than did students of…

Reading comprehension was compared in 20 adult illiterates, 20 low-achieving students in grade two, and 21 low achievers in grade four. Results indicated similar processing difficulties in all three groups. Readers were weak in constructing meaning beyond a clause unit, and did not differentiate processing for narrative versus expository material.…

Summarizes recent research in reading and developmental psychology. Studies on schema theory and metacognition, and cognitive styles are described, and their implications for school library media programs and teaching critical thinking are discussed. (EM)

Studies the effects of two comprehension training methods (one based on imagery and inferencing, the other based on text structure) on various aspects of third and fifth graders' reading performance. Results indicate that neither method had a measurable impact on reading comprehension nor on metacognitive knowledge of the reading process. (RS)

Presents a decision model for planning learner feedback in distance education courses with emphasis on college-level teaching. Knowledge components in information processing models of learning are described, task analysis for learning from text is discussed in terms of comprehension, and criteria for designing learner feedback are examined. (LRW)