Explores how well measures of verbal short-term memory and naming speed tasks predict children's reading achievement under various IQ control conditions. Both were effective, but when controlling for verbal IQ, memory measures are less reliable, whereas digit-naming speed remains a significant predictor of reading achievement. (MM)

Indicates that adding large amounts of supportive information to basal reader stories increased children's story understanding and enhanced their interest in the stories, but had no effect on reading rate or the amount of important information included in story retellings. (FL)

Using sixth-grade students, a study examines (1) relationships between background knowledge and passage comprehension, (2) relative usefulness of certain variations in measuring available knowledge, (3) value of a background measure as applied to a teacher-directed small group prereading language and concept organizer activity, and (4) effect of a…

Reports the results of a screening test used to identify fifth and sixth grade students who employ a text processing strategy based on an inaccurately constructed hypothesis about the material being read. (FL)

Reports results of measuring children's comprehension of basal reader stories that had been revised based on notions of the role of prior knowledge in comprehension and the establishment of key story content. (AEA)

Two experiments designed to examine the effects on poor readers' comprehension of increasing their decoding speed indicated that the decoding training on single words and phrases increased the speed of word recognition but did not improve comprehension performance. (MKM)

Examines how cultural schemata influence American and Palauan students' reported strategies and their reading comprehension. Finds that students predominantly use processing strategies categorized under awareness development and intrasentential ties establishment for culturally unfamiliar passages. Finds that students use intersentential ties and…

Investigates whether listening to stories in literary Arabic would have salutary effects on kindergarten children's emergent literacy skills. Finds that children in the experimental classes outperformed control classes on comprehension and active use of language. Concludes that children can acquire a second register through exposure in school…

Examines the effects of three text signal types (headings, previews, logical connectives) on relatively sophisticated college age readers and their comprehension of technical expository prose. Concludes that all three types can enhance comprehension, but that facilitation depends on passage length and difficulty. (FL)

As measured by responses to a main-idea essay question and by written summaries of two passages, students' ability to abstract the macrostructure of problem/solution text read independently was improved by the use of structure training. (FL)

Investigates the effect of two repeated reading procedures on second grade transitional readers' oral reading performance with practiced and unpracticed passages. Found that reading rate, accuracy, comprehension and prosodic reading were significantly improved by repeated reading practice, regardless of training procedure employed. (SKC)

Children in first, second, and third grades were subjects in a study that investigated how well they drew inferences after reading their own dictated stories, peer-dictated stories, and adult-written stories. Results showed they inferred better if they dictated the story themselves or if they were accurate decoders. (HOD)

Suggests that self-reported story climax imagery is related to deeper levels of processing on reading comprehension measures that do not rely disproportionately on verbal reasoning processes. (AEA)

Indicates that college students make use of word length and shape information to decode text and that the context of a passage affects students' knowledge of the syntactic structure and semantic content of that passage. (AEA)

Examines children's comprehension of stories and their verbal interactions during storybook readings in groups of various sizes. Finds that reading to children in small groups results in as much interaction as one-to-one readings and leads to greater comprehension than whole-class or even one-to-one readings. (KEH)