Theories and practices concerned with cognitive functioning and development and its possible relationship to reading and reading instruction are reviewed. The nature of the strategies involved in reading and thinking are similar. Increase in task complexity for reading most likely involves cognitive functioning that ranges in complexity similar to…

One hundred thirty-eight second graders, identified by their teachers as "poor readers with incomplete phonics skills" were given four specially constructed tests of phonics skills: a context test over meaningful but visually unfamiliar words, an isolated sounds test, a McKee type multiple choice test, and a word completion test. Eighty…

Reports on a survey of third grade children concerning their criteria for good reading. (FL)

Latent inferential comprehension scores were calculated for fourth-, fifth-, and sixth-grade students in a study that investigated cognitive styles as mediating variables in comprehension processes. (HOD)

Documents large differences in the reading of function and content words and how these differences change with development. (FL)

Concludes that when presented stories, some of which were inconsistent because of missing pages, less skilled readers were poorer at reporting a missing page, placing it correctly, and fixing the story than were skilled readers. Stories are appended. (FL)

Examines the duration of visual persistence and the relative processing rate in poor and normal readers. Subjects were 48 males aged 7 to 13 years. (MP)

In a task designed to separate perceptual processes from memory, reading-disabled 12-year-olds showed no perceptual deficits as compared to their peers. However, they exhibited major deficiencies in memory skills, appearing to suffer from a basic information-processing deficiency. (Author/CS)

Multiple factors contribute to individual differences in reading ability. The two most thoroughly examined are socioeconomic status (SES) and phonological awareness (PA). Although these factors are often investigated individually, they are rarely considered together. Here we propose that SES systematically influences the relationship between PA…

Fast and average readers were tested on four tasks. Fast readers appear to pick up more information per fixation on structured textual material, and had a greater span of apprehension for unrelated elements. Results disagree with the view that reading speed depends solely on ability to infer missing information. (CHK)

This monograph examines reading as a cognitive process, focusing on the relationship between reading and thinking as developed in Piagetian theory. Sections of the paper provide a brief overview of Piagetian theory, pointing out its relevance for reading; examine correlational, comparative, and perceptual studies of the relationship between…

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…

Fourth and sixth graders and adults read words preceded by either a congruous, incongruous, or no-sentence context, and then completed another task where they named the color of the target word. Results suggested that context effects are mediated by automatic processes which decrease in importance with age and reading ability. (Author/JMB)

Critically examines the assumption underlying research into stages of word recognition provided by R.J. Chabot and others and questions whether their analysis of speed of processing differences warrants making strong conclusions about the nature of reading deficits. (HOD)

Examines and rejects two traditional assumptions about fluent reading: that identification of letters is necessary to identify words; and that identification of words is necessary to comprehend. Proposes that identification and comprehension are two separate tasks and that a reader comprehends because he reads for meaning in the first place. (MB)