Intended for reading educators and researchers, this handbook characterizes the current state of methodology and the cumulative research-based knowledge of reading. The book's three sections cover methodological issues, basic reading processes, and instructional practices. The 25 chapters discuss the following topics: (1) reading research history,…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 17 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) reasoning strategies used by gifted and average fifth grade children in written discourse; (2) the effect of mode of discourse on the syntactic complexity of…

Papers in this report were presented at a conference on text characteristics, convened as part of the Learning from Text Project. The foreword describes the University of California and California State University Joint Projects Steering Committee project to determine the relationship between ability to learn from text and academic achievement,…

The purpose of this study was to explore middle school students' perceptions of what factors facilitated their learning of science. Between 50 and 60 high-achieving middle school students were in residence on the University of South Florida campus for 12 consecutive days of study in the "World of Water" program. There were two sessions per summer…

This study examined the effects of the type of adjunct questions (use-a-generality, remember-a-generality, and remember-an-instance) and the position of these questions either before the relevant text passage (pre-questions) or after it (post-questions) on the three corresponding performance levels of learning. The subjects were 74 eighth-grade…

Popular sentiment toward the teaching of thinking skills and, in particular, higher order skills, is on the rise. Many people are wondering about the best way for teachers to foster the growth of reasoning skills in their classrooms. This study attempts to improve the teaching of reasoning by investigating teaching behaviors or characteristics…

This report includes an overview of the design and procedures used in the junior high school phase of a study of managing academic tasks (MAT) conducted by the Research on Classroom Learning and Teaching Program at the University of Texas at Austin. A description of the current status of data analysis, a summary of preliminary findings, and…

Part of a continuing series intended for use by reading professionals interested in understanding and improving the reading of adolescents, this report contains five articles dealing with a variety of subjects. Specific topics discussed in the articles are (1) readability, (2) reading deficiencies and previous English instruction of land grant…

The study examines the rule space model, a probabilistic model capable of measuring cognitive skill acquisition and of diagnosing erroneous rules of operation in a procedural domain. The model involves two important components: (1) determination of a set of bug distributions (bug density functions representing clusters around the rules); and (2)…

This document accompanies the Conceptual Learning and Development Assessment Series III: Tree, a test constructed to chart the conceptual development of individuals. As a technical manual, it contains information on the rationale, development, standardization, and reliability of the test, as well as essential information and statistical data for…

This paper attempts to elucidate the relationship between linguistic form, interactional strategies and social meaning on the basis of a detailed study of a natural conversation. The investigation is based on a conversation recorded in an institution for Mexican immigrants by a linguist, a native American of Mexican ancestry, and program advisor…

This investigation capitalizes upon the information processing models that depend upon measurement of latency of response to a mathematical problem and the decomposition of reaction time (RT). Simple two term addition problems were presented with possible solutions for true-false verification, and accuracy and RT to response were recorded. Total…

The ability of children at different ages to distinguish instructions to "ask" from instructions to "tell" and the types of structures used to express these directives were studied. Subjects were 120 children, aged 2 years 6 months to 6 years 6 months. Children were instructed to either ask or tell an adult or another child to give them puzzle…

The purpose of this research was to develop methods to study the effects of context on children's comprehension and production of temporal terms such as "before,""after,""next,""then," and "but first." A longitudinal study, using naturalistic and traditional laboratory methods, and three…

A previous study found that middle-class Hebrew-English bilingual children were characterized by distinctive perceptual strategies and more advanced processing in certain verbal tasks, as compared to similar monolinguals. The present study tested whether similar strategies and response patterns will appear when the children involved are from…