As part of a two-year project that examined the processes by which children initially approach the reading task, a study was devised to test the project's materials and procedures. Selected by a pretest, four kindergarten children, with no prior reading instruction, were taught the same reading content using the initial teaching alphabet for a…

The findings of this study indicated that children's capacity to comprehend television advertising is primarily a developmental phenomenon, although social and experiential factors may have a moderate positive and a minor negative influence, respectively. Research subjects were 289 elementary school boys of first, third, and fifth grade levels,…

Ideas to be understood and to be remembered must be organized. To organize ideas the reader must recognize the relationship of the parts of the ideas, to one another and to the whole. The reader with no orderly set of the ideas presented on the printed page cannot carry on a dialogue with the author and profit from the reading experience. What did…

The relative effectiveness of including behavioral objectives, classified according to the major levels of cognition, in independent study materials for high school juniors is analyzed in this brief summary of the author's dissertation. The three major questions under consideration are whether: (1) the use of behavioral objectives has an effect…

The effects of prereading techniques, specifically "advance organizers" and "structured overview" were studied by comparing retention and comprehension of reading material in high school students with and without prereading treatment. An advance organizer is a brief passage giving a general and inclusive introduction to material to be read. A…

Reports on a study showing that teachers' understanding of learning and the age of children affect children's comprehension styles. (EL)

Argues that children need to be taught how to extract, synthesize, organize, and integrate important information from texts into their own knowledge structures and describes some techniques that can be used to activate prior knowledge. (HOD)

Examines the claim that television does not actively involve the viewer cognitively in ways usually associated with mature information processing. Study is described that suggests active and differential processing of television information by viewers and an increase in the level of sophistication in understanding the medium. Twenty-six references…

Offers examples of lessons in conflict in reading material that can lead students to read critically, to seek further reading, and to enhance their comprehension.(HOD)

A correlation exists between verbal ability test scores and name identity minus physical identity reaction times in a letter matching task. The present results support Carroll's (1981) suggestion that the reaction time difference is related more to speed than power component of standardized tests and is not optimum for prediction. (Author/RD)

Compares the performance of Black, Hispanic, and Anglo students on a story unscrambling task to determine if sociocultural differences in story schemata affect reading comprehension. Shows some effects suggesting that the three groups have somewhat different strategies for choosing initial and final sentences and for making narratives coherent.…

Data were reanalyzed from a previously reported study of the passage dependence of reading comprehension questions being developed for the revised SAT. The objective was to uncover any gender differences in approaches to and performance on a task requiring examinees to answer reading comprehension questions without reading the passages on which…

Investigated cognitive development of eleventh-grade students (N=389) in Jordan and its relationship to comprehension of concrete and formal physics concepts. Results revealed that cognitive level (17% formal; 52% concrete) was related to comprehension of both concrete and formal concepts. Findings related to sex differences are also reported.…

Examines the effects of a cloze procedure developed from transfer feature theory of processing in reading on immediate and delayed recall of good and poor readers. (HOD)

Reviews research in which children's processing of individual words is examined in prose context. When taken together, the data suggest that the reader's dependence on contextual constraint for individual word identification decreases with age. (HOD)