This study found that the provision of ergonomic workstations for 12 older persons with age-related macular degeneration who used low vision devices significantly increased the participants' reading speed and decreased their discomfort when reading.

An account was tested of the development of the interplay between automatic processes and cognitive resources in reading. According to compensatory-encoding theory, with advancing skill, readers increasingly keep automatic processes from faltering and provide timely, accurate data to working memory by pausing, looking back, rereading, and…

The study involving 11 reading disabled and 9 normal elementary school children evaluated the relative efficacy of practice with feedback on accuracy and practice with feedback on both accuracy and response rate related to response speed on word reading performance. Ss were exposed to randomized blocks of 10 high frequency words and 20 words which…

A study was conducted to examine the relationship of reading rate to comprehension on material read with a pacer and without a pacer. Two hundred paired scores were obtained in a college reading and study skills course in which students read both paced and nonpaced material alternately during class time and recorded their rate and comprehension…

The hypothesis of this study was that reading rate would be relatively constant (within a 15% range of the subject's mean reading rate) both within and across different difficulty levels of materials as long as the levels of difficulty remained at or below the subject's ability level. The subjects were 65 college students whose reading levels…

Findings indicate that, when skimming, readers find it difficult to perceptually select from a passage information that is relevant to their goal in skimming. There was a reaction time advantage for verification of gist-relevant information as opposed to details, which tended to increase with reading rate. (Author/PN)

Points up the importance of encoding time to the global act of reading. (AEA)

The Summer Adventure in Learning (SAIL) program was developed to train prospective teachers in tutorial methods intended to improve reading achievement. The program's primary instructional objective was to decrease the pupil reading rate resulting in improved reading comprehension. (JN)

The paper describes a method of estimating a person's oral reading rate from a small sample (a short sentence) of his speech. Reading rate was obtained by measuring the speaking portion of a considerable amount of reading, and dividing it by the number of phonemes in the material. (Author/PHR)

Results of four experiments with 81 blind children and adults (ages 14 and over) comparing Standard English Grade 2 Braille with three reduced codes and one expanded code (in relation to speed, retention of the basic seven-line structure, no increase in bulk of braille publications, and ease of learning) show that a change in the code is possible.…

This investigation compared the reading comprehension of 60 fourth-grade students in an open space school during periods of quiet and periods of naturally occurring background noise. Noise had no significant effect on accuracy or reading speed. (JMF)

The acquisition of rapid reading skills, with relation to language and naming skills, was assessed in 21 severely and profoundly hearing impaired children mainstreamed into regular elementary school classrooms. (DLS)

A study with 179 Australian college students casts doubts on the usefulness of the theoretical model of human information processing postulated by S. Lehrl and B. Fischer (1990). Instead of reflecting properties of a limited capacity system, the Basic Unit of Information Processing (BIP) seems to be a marker for reading speed. (SLD)

Adults and third, fifth, and eighth graders read stories implying a consequence and were asked questions about the stories. Results indicated that subjects were not as likely to generate elaborative inferences as inferences that were necessary for story comprehension. Some age differences were found. (BC)

A comparison of reading rates of 24 print readers and 23 Braille readers on oral reading, silent reading, and studying, found significant differences as a function of reading group and reading task but no group-by-task interaction. Less than one-third of the Braille readers read slower than print readers. (Contains references.) (Author/CR)