According to the author, competence and performance and their interrelationships are the concern of linguistics. Performance models must: (1) be based on physical data of speech; (2) describe the phenomena under investigation; (3) predict events which are confirmed by experiment; (4) suggest causal relationships by identifying necessary and…

Psychological experiments investigating imposed and induced cognitive strategies are reviewed and related to operations in reading comprehension. It has been suggested that comprehension differences between good and poor readers may arise from the way in which they habitually organize intra- and inter-sentence elements during input.…

Three pairs of spatial antonyms (higher than/lower than, above/below, and rising away from/falling away from) were used in a task in which subjects judged whether a sentence accurately described a previously presented pictorial relationship. Subjects' reaction times were used as the dependent measure. Since all three word pairs were used…

Consciousness in the learning process is equated with the student's capacity for criticizing and checking. Eight prerequisites for comprehension are presented. Also discussed are the advantages and disadvantages of programmed instruction, and the advantages of audiovisual teaching. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Presentation and criticism of pertinent work, plus the authors' own model. (Text is in French.) (DB)

The comprehension of big, little, and same number and the production of relational terminology was assessed in 168 preschool children. (Author/BD)

Examines Frank Smith's analysis of the reading process with respect to comprehension, specifically, his assertion that during the reading process, comprehension of meaning precedes word identification. Discusses the implications of Smith's analysis for the teaching of reading. (JM)

The pilot study investigated receptive and expressive humor in students (total N=54) with learning disabilities, mild mental retardation, or no handicap. Among results were that older learning disabled students were more like mildly retarded students than normal peers; and that learning disabled students had more difficulty understanding…

Three studies examined strategies used by deaf adolescents and children (total N=150) in reading and writing. A model of literacy development is proposed, and remedial approaches are suggested. Results indicated deaf children attempted to make use of cue sources in text, such as pragmatic features, context, and prediction. (DB)

The ability of 22 phonologically disordered and normally speaking children's ability to process (phonologically, syntactically, and semantically) spoken language was evaluated. No differences between groups was found in number of errors, pattern of errors, or reaction times when monitoring sentences for target words, irrespective of sentence type.…

Investigates how preschool children gain understanding about the functions of print in order to determine if there are trends in children's processing of print functions that can be identified and used to gain insight into the process. (FL)

A processing model is presented that deals explicitly with both the text-comprehension and problem-solving aspects of word arithmetic problems. The model simulates construction of cognitive representations at various levels, distinguishes several information processing steps, and analyzes processing requirements that differ among types of…

Illustrates the existence of meanings in conversation that are not based on the listener's interpretations by analyzing the conversations from a family therapy session. Transcripts of the conversations are appended. (HTH)

Offers suggestions on using underlining as a strategy to help students identify key concepts. (FL)

Two studies investigated (1) the ability of learning disabled children to perform tasks that specifically demand the recognition and production of main-idea statements, and (2) their ability to detect an inappropriate sentence in a paragraph. (PN)