A study investigated children's recall and representation for multiple episode stories differing in terms of goal structure. Subjects were 36 third and fifth grade students reading below grade level, and 48 students from the same grades who were identified as average readers. The students read or listened to stories containing embedded and…

The literature of reading theory and research suggests a number of key factors involved in the comprehension process. In simplest terms, comprehension is the process by which an individual actively generates meaning from some linguistic input. Five factors of reading comprehension have been identified through research: vocabulary knowledge, the…

Strategies for the development of comprehension during the beginning reading stages are discussed in this paper. Among the topics dealt with are relationships between developmental stages of speech production and reading comprehension; ways of creating a reading climate that promotes experiences with literature; specific techniques for using…

This document reports the findings of a study of children's comprehension of stories containing inconsistent information. The subjects were 84 children in kindergarten and the second, fourth and sixth grades. Twelve subjects from each grade listened to two stories and twelve other subjects from grades 2, 4, and 6 read two stories. Each subject was…

This paper describes how a constraint dependency grammar (CDG) parser performs a syntactic analysis of a single sentence (as part of a speech recognition system). The paper extends an existing CDG (developed by H. Maruyama) to process a lattice or graph of sentence hypotheses instead of separate text strings. The paper also describes how the CDG…

This study is based on the assumption that texts are composed of two kinds of propositions: lexical and relational. Lexical propositions account for semantic relations within a clause, and they can be described as semantic role relations between a lexical predicate and its arguments. Relational propositions account for functional relations among…

Readers' ability to identify and accept relational propositions (RPs) in a text may influence their judgments of text coherence. Types of text comprehension were defined in two ways: (1) according to whether an RP was immediately identifiable, identifiable after further reading, or not identifiable; and (2) according to whether the proposition was…

The relationship of reading comprehension accuracy and a contingently administered token reinforcement program used with an elementary level learning disabled student in the classroom was examined. The S earned points for each correct answer made after oral reading sessions. At the conclusion of the class he could exchange his points for rewards.…

Children's "information books" are usually illustrated books on one topic, typically identified by the title. For example, "Squirrels" tells all about the characteristics and behaviors of squirrels. An exploration of what does or does not constitute an information book using five specific questions about the genre yields an…

This paper is based on an analysis of a portion of data collected during a 6-month field study in a chemistry department in a Canadian university. Specifically, the views on the interaction among science, technology, and society (STS) held by undergraduates in this department were examined using a variation of VOSTS CDN-2. In addition, individual…

This paper is concerned with two pervasive and apparently reliable theories, namely, those general accounts of the status of science and art which seem to form part of the "bedrock" of contemporary thinking. The first section discusses what are taken to be the most commonly accepted and highly legitimized general accounts of both science…

A study investigated the effects of chartoons--cartoon-like informational graphics--and three-dimensional graphs on the attractiveness of graphs and on the information gain from graphs. Subjects, 86 students from a mass communication course at the University of Texas, were randomly assigned to two experimental groups, each of which was shown a set…

Noting that--although explicit attention to the unconscious has been rare in argument theories--the notion is unavoidable in any full theory, this paper argues that the unconscious plays a central role in argumentation. After briefly discussing the characteristics of the unconscious, the first section of the paper presents an analysis of…

Even though readability formulas are being used more widely than ever before in schools, libraries, businesses, newspapers, and government, there are critics who argue against their use. Criticism includes blaming the formulas for the "dumbing down" of textbooks, for being poor writers' guides, and for not taking into account the background or…

Eighteen deaf college students performed two tasks designed to investigate possible alternative codes of reading and remembering. First, Ss judged the meaningfulness of sentences with or without a concurrent task (intended to interfere with either articulatory or visual-spatial coding). Secondly, Ss remembered a list of six letters presented…