The improvement of college students' reading rate and comprehension is a major educational concern. Many students arrive at college unprepared for the massive amount of required reading. This study presents several attempts to improve vocabulary, reading rate, and comprehension and addresses tangential issues related to the improvement of reading…

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…

This study explored the effects of different sentence conditions upon reading comprehension as evidenced by reading rate and recall taken at various times. Thirty-two subjects from a California high school representing four sex-by-ability groups, read experimental material on a table-top programmer while being timed. Recall responses were recorded…

An overview of significant research studies, bibliographies, historical reviews, definitions, and commentaries on speed reading during the past 60 years is presented in this paper. The first part of the paper considers the concept and definitions of speed reading, and summarizes research from the l940s and 1950s--including discussion of eye…

Due in part to health care improvements and the post World War Two Baby Boom, (Siegel, 1972), the population of older adults is growing and will continue to grow. By 2030 approximately 20 percent of the U.S. population will be over age 65 (Verma, 1989). By attending to readability (the ease of reading a printed page) and legibility (the speed with…

This research investigates whether the Computer-Based Academic Assessment System (CAAS), a battery of tests examining speed and accuracy at performing component reading skills, would be useful for identifying reading disability in college students. One important question was whether CAAS could distinguish reading disability from non-disability or…

A study explored an application of rauding theory to the developmental components that contribute to elementary-age children's reading comprehension. The relationships among cognitive power, auditory accuracy level, pronunciation (word recognition) level, rauding (comprehension) accuracy level, rauding rate (reading rate) level, and rauding…

Noting that the use of all-capital print on microcomputer screens eliminates the configuration clues (ascending and descending letters that create the physical shape of the word) that help a reader recognize a word and read more quickly, a study was conducted to examine the effect of all-capital print versus standard mixed print on reading speed…

A study was devised to determine whether internal reading flexibility would be manifested by individual proficient readers, operating in the "rauding" mode (typical reading manner), and observed in a natural setting reading passages from textbook materials. Reading times were examined using both number of standard words and number of…

The study involving three blind elementary school, six blind high school, and four blind college students was designed to establish oral reading rates and oral reading error rates for Ss reading conventional braille volumes and brailled materials with the Digi-cassette, an electronic braille reading and writing machine. Data suggested several…

The eye movements of two college graduates were monitored in a study of flexible reading, which is defined as the ability to adjust one's rate and approach to reading according to the purpose of reading, the difficulty of the material, and one's knowledge of the subject matter. The subjects were told to read an excerpt from a tenth grade biology…

Applied factor analysis to the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Third Edition (WISC-III) scores for 505 gifted students, to evaluate the construct validity of the WISC-III with this population. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that subtests that emphasize speed of reading are not valid for gifted children and suggest that an…

The effects on reading speed and comprehension of window proportions and page turning in electronic text were investigated in this study. Subjects--61 undergraduate students at the University of Wisconsin--Whitewater--were administered a standardized reading text displayed as photocopied dot matrix print in simulation of electronic text. There…

This study examined the adaptability of reading rate to passage difficulty under different conditions of task-induced processing. Sixteen experimental passages varying in subject matter and ranging from 85 to 171 words were selected from a set of 32 texts rated for comprehensibility. The eight easiest and eight hardest texts were selected. Another…