Central coherence is the ability to perceive and connect salient information in a context such as a narrative text. Individuals with autism exhibit a detail-focused cognitive style of processing information that overlooks connections and shows weak central coherence. A six-session instructional intervention to foster coherence processing was…

Face-to-face time with students in the early childhood college setting is at a premium and often flies by before we begin to scratch the surface of active learning. Building a community of learners is one of our main goals as instructors; therefore, we strive to set up active learning environments optimal for all students. This reflection on…

Previous studies have shown that students with low knowledge understand and learn better from more cohesive texts, whereas high-knowledge students have been shown to learn better from texts of lower cohesion. This study examines whether high-knowledge readers in computer science benefit from a text of low cohesion. Undergraduate students (n = 65)…

Current electronic text formats can hinder the acquisition of main ideas or the central representation of a text unless some structural cues are embedded in the reading environment. This principle is based on the premise of cognitive psychology that learning is a reorganization of cognitive structure and that readers are most likely incapable of…

Presents results of a study of how readers fill in information "gaps" in a text to make meaning, using adolescents' response to a story by Brecht. Concludes that such gaps bore children uninterested in making meaning, and that those who make meaning from a mechanical stance may be limited in their comprehension unless deeper ways of…

Examines the individual differences in cognitive styles of black male elementary school students to determine the implications of these differences for reading comprehension processes, especially of expository text. Results from 43 4th-grade students from 3 urban public schools reveal differences in reading comprehension for low and high…

Considers current research on reading in a second language from five points of view: (1) the reader's role in light of new models of language and textual meaning; (2) revised definitions of textual meaning and reader processing; (3) reader processing of schemata; (4) relationship between second-language competency and reader strategies; and (5)…

Contends that, although early precursors to reading and the first phases of reading acquisition have been extensively studied, the acquisition of different components of the reading process have not been considered. Reviews research from the past 15 years to examine the relationship between decoding and comprehension skills. (CFR)

Drawing upon data from a series of studies, this paper analyzes children's verbalizations about a wordless picture book to discover any relationships between a child's learning style and his or her comprehension of events in the book. Using the definitions of learning style established by M. Rosenberg, the paper also compares the behavior of…