Single word oral reading was systematically examined in a 6-year-old hyperlexic boy with mental retardation, attention deficit disorder, and hyperactivity. Reading performances were compared to those of normally developing readers and to those of patients with adult-onset alexias to test three hypotheses regarding the mechanisms of reading in…

The inferential operations of mildly retarded students reading at the intermediate level were investigated using methods based on discourse comprehension theory. It was hypothesized that problems encountered in reading by these students were related to difficulties in generating logical inferences. Mildly retarded junior high school students and…

In 1981, a study was conducted to investigate the academic performance and persistence patterns of developmental students who matriculated at Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC) between 1977 and 1979. Specifically, the study sought to determine the proportion of developmental students who successfully completed developmental and subsequent…

A study compared the average reading ability levels of freshmen enrolled at an open-door community college with the readability levels of eight content area textbooks used in courses at the institution. Subjects, 100 students enrolled in reading courses, were randomly selected and administered the Nelson-Denny Reading Test to determine reading…

A study presents descriptive and correlational results from questionnaires and tests administered to approximately 650 children in two cohorts, who, with their parents, are participating in a longitudinal study of reading comprehension development. Results from kindergarten and first-grade students showed low but positive correlations for parents'…

This study investigated the effects of heuristically based assignments and tests on adolescents' written responses to literature. In order to examine both tests and instruction, two separate but related experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 investigated whether the inclusion of guided prewriting on essay tests for two poems and two short…

B. S. Bloom's theory of school learning states that three independent variables account for most of the variation in students' achievement: cognitive entry behaviors (CEB), affective entry characteristics, and the quality of instruction. These variables determine the nature of learning outcomes--level and type of achievement, rate of learning, and…

Because audio-visual information is pervasive in contemporary cultural communications, this study looked at the importance of audio-visual information and how it can be used for educational purposes. Specifically, the study compared the effectiveness of audio-pictorial slide-tape presentations and printed verbal language selections as stimuli for…

A project that investigated the metalinguistic awareness of adults (what they know about language as distinct from their ability to use language) is described and summarized in this final report. Subjects were 60 monolingual English speakers and 26 bilingual (Spanish and English) speakers enrolled in adult education classes. They fell into three…

The ability to correctly answer reading comprehension test items, without having read the accompanying reading passage, was compared for third grade learning disabled students and their peers from a regular classroom. In the first experiment, fourteen multiple choice items were selected from the Stanford Achievement Test. No reading passages were…

To investigate whether teachers asked questions during reading lessons in order to evaluate rather than teach comprehension, the discourse of 11 reading lessons was audiotaped in four elementary school classrooms. Transcripts of the lessons were analyzed to identify the function and source of teacher questions and the accuracy, cognitive level,…

The volume presents an appraisal of the empirical research in Bilingual Education. Over 180 research studies and project evaluations were reviewed and evaluated for the soundness of their research designs. Chapter I presents a discussion of the types of research conducted in bilingual education. It includes an introduction to the problems…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) aspects of the organization of redundancy rules in the lexicon; (2) the adult role in early child language acquisition; (3) semantic categorization,…

A study investigated 35 third grade students' requests and responses in their reading groups to determine (1) whether peer instructional groups designed to differ according to reading ability do, in fact, differ on measures of reading achievement; (2) how the processes of interaction, particularly requests and responses, differ in these groups;…

Two text-based prose grammars, the W. Kintsch and B. J. F. Meyer models, were compared as to their sensitivity to potential developmental differences in children's recall of prose. Participants in the study were 212 fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students who had been classified as average or below average in reading ability. The Meyer analysis…