Text complexity has received increased attention due to the CCSS, which call for students to comprehend increasingly more complex texts as they progress through grades. Quantitative text complexity (or readability) indices are based on text attributes (e.g., sentence lengths, and lexical, syntactic, & semantic difficulty), quantified by…

The purpose of this study was to compare traditional oral reading fluency (ORF) measures to a computerized oral reading evaluation (CORE) system that uses speech recognition software. We applied a mixed model approach with two within-subject variables to test the mean WCPM score differences and the error rates between: passage length (25, 50, 85,…

During the past century, most research addressing the legibility of text in print has used adult subjects. The study reported in this paper investigated differences in reading rate and comprehension scores of eighth grade students reading from paper copy or computer screen. Three hundred eighth grade students in computer literacy classes were…

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of three electronic text variables (run-around, wrap-around, and transparent text) on reading speed and comprehension. One hundred thirty-two undergraduate students in an introductory computer literacy course at a major university were asked to read one of three randomly-distributed passages…

Anticipating a possible future method of newspaper design (including multimedia content) and delivery, a study examined the interface among people, modality (paper, computer, multimedia), and three types of news story (news, sports, entertainment). The "primacy of print" theory (which predicts that information will be recalled better…

A study examined the relationship between text schemata and comprehension monitoring to determine elementary school children's detection and remediation of internal inconsistencies in narrative and expository passages. Data were elicited (through computerized experimental reading passages containing internal inconsistencies) from 87 students in…

This study investigated the differences in the reading rate of eighth grade students on a cloze reading exercise involving the reading of text from a computer monitor. Several different modes of presentation were used in order to determine the effect of prior experience with computers on the students' reading rate. Subjects were 240 eighth grade…

A study investigated the role of phonemic (sound-based) information during silent reading to determine whether the visual tongue-twister effect occurs only when readers make judgments of sentence acceptability or whether the visual tongue-twister effect is due to the way sentences are represented in memory. Data were collected from 45 university…

Discussion of the use of desktop publishing software to produce instructional materials highlights a study that used a wrap-around text format with variations in the amount of white space surrounding the graphic to investigate the effect of white space variations on the reading speed and comprehension of undergraduate students. (28 references)…