This review of the literature on reading theories is built around three components: an explication of each theory, an evaluation of the theory based on an examination of its internal and external coherence and correspondence, and an application of the theory to a child's reading. The literature is organized around discussions of 12 benchmarks…

A study investigated the hypothesis that mental imagery facilitates access to prior knowledge and therefore enhances the ability to infer and make text-relevant predictions. The subjects, 29 first grade and 29 third grade students, were randomly assigned to either an experimental group where they were instructed to make pictures in their head to…

Approaches to helping students remember concepts in secondary mathematics are presented. The eleven points listed are: 1) distinguishing between natural and whole numbers; 2) remembering isosceles triangles have two equal sides; 3) finding all possible pairs of integral factors of a given number; 4) recalling the meaning of reflexive, symmetric,…

This paper argues that the information processing model provides a promising basis on which to build a comprehensive theory of instruction. Characteristics of the major information processing constructs are outlined including attention, encoding and rehearsal, working memory, long term memory, retrieval, and metacognitive processes, and a unifying…

In this report, three theories of transitive inference are compared as they apply to the solution of linear syllogisms: a spatial theory, a linguistic theory, and a new mixed linguistic-spatial theory. Each theory is expressed in terms of an information-processing (flow chart) model and a mathematical model that quantifies the…

This study examined the effect(s) of rhyme on the recognition and recall of story events by 32 nursery school children at the University of Maine Child Study Center. Although subjects reported liking stories better when they were presented as nursery rhymes rather than prose passages, recognition of story events was significantly higher for prose…

In this pilot study, the effect of experimenter cuing on recall and organization of response was analyzed and compared between subjects identified as learning disabled with an isolated memory impairment (LDMI), learning disabled without an isolated memory impairment (LDO), and normal controls (N). Six subjects were selected for each group after…

Two experiments investigated individual differences in semantic recall of expository text. In the first experiment, fourth grade students of superior and average ability read and recalled a prose passage that had been analyzed for its semantic and logical content with a content structure grammar. Unlike past research results, the superior…

Reading achievement tests have been used to identify deficiencies in inner city, poor readers; however, they often do not provide information about encoding strategies which lead some children to academic success. Immediate memory and visual analytic differences which contribute to the success of skilled readers are isolated in this study using 20…

The effects of verbal analogies and quantitative and verbal aptitudes on comprehension and memory of a technical text were studied. In a cued recall test, the presence of an analogy decreased the performance of high quantitative aptitude university students and tended to increase the performance of low quantitative aptitude students. In a…

This report contains brief descriptions of 37 published and unpublished works and ongoing studies produced by a project designed to investigate the ways in which both children and adults comprehend and remember connected discourse. Among the topics of the published works, which include articles, book chapters, and a book, are the following: story…

Undergraduates enrolled in a Personalized System of Instruction (PSI) (Keller Plan) section of Principles of Educational Psychology at Mississippi State University were subjects in a study of the effects of no review (NR), review questions (RQ), and review concepts (RC), on short-term retention in a PSI class. The NR group received no review. The…

To determine if imagery mediates memory for signs and words, 80 sign-language-fluent Ss -- half of whom were congenitally deaf and half of whom were normal-hearing -- were tested by varying the imagery values of stimuli. The relative efficacy of word and sign codes in processing and retrieving information was studied by systematically varying the…

The methods used and the results obtained by means of the accelerated language learning techniques developed by Georgi Lozanov, Director of the Institute of Suggestology in Bulgaria, are discussed. The following topics are included: (1) discussion of hypermnesia, "super memory," and the reasons foreign languages were chosen for purposes…

A model was developed to account for similarities and differences between picture and word processing in a variety of semantic and episodic memory tasks. The model contains three levels of processing: low-level processing of the physical characteristics of externally presented pictures and words; an intermediate level where the low-level processor…