Whether preview and recall sentences affected readers' memory of text material in separate chapters was studied in seven experiments using a total of 130 undergraduate students. Hypotheses for the causes of the beneficial effects of preview signals and recall sentences on memory are postulated. (SLD)

Two experiments investigated to what extent schema activation is involved in any facilitative effect that headings may have on multiple-choice test performance following the reading of a passage. In the first experiment, 1,116 college students read a 1,760-word passage on human sexuality with headings either present or absent. An analysis of the…

Explores ways people learn from text. Content overlap between a text and the reader's prior knowledge is identified as one factor. Methods are proposed to identify whether a text is suitable for readers with a specific background. The usefulness of coherence gaps that stimulate constructive activities is discussed. (SLD)

College undergraduates read stories from one of two directed perspectives or no directed perspective. An idea's significance in terms of the assigned perspective affected both initial learning and recall one week later. Schemata, or conceptual frameworks, were assumed to aid in memory and retrieval. (Author/GDC)

To provide a test of the notion that criterial task knowledge facilitates learning and, consequently, performance in studying, a study examined the effects of an explicit prereading task directive and an explicit postreading criterion on the studying behaviors of 40 college undergraduates. After presentation of a prereading task directive prepared…

The effect of graphic organizers on 14 learning-disabled students' (grades 5 and 6) recall of science content was compared with that of students taught identical content without the graphic organizer condition. Evaluation two weeks later found no statistically significant differences between the groups on production or choice response tasks. (DB)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 27 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) the effect of a crowded or spaced appearance of narrative material on the reading comprehension of above-average and below-average fourth grade students; (2)…

Explores how several kinds of metadiscourse that convey interpersonal meanings affect readers. Describes results of an immediate recall test given on two informative paragraphs which contained some modality markers. Discusses possible roles of modality markers in discourse processes. (KEH)

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 14 titles deal with the following topics: children's ability to read their own dictated oral language; adjunct structure and reading comprehension; learning and comprehension of simultaneously presented stimuli in children of…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 30 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) effects of graphic organizers, textual organization, and reading comprehension level on recall of expository prose; (2) the effect of metaphor on the reading…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 21 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: effects of methods of study, cognitive style, pre-information on the construction of written material, gender of generic pronouns, and study questions interspersed…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: semantic constructivity in children's comprehension; text-based inferences generated by children in reading written discourse; a review of reading comprehension…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 12 titles deal with the following topics: advance organizers; a comparison of the effectiveness and efficiency of behavioral objectives and sample tests; anaphoric nominal substitution and its relationship to reading…