Two groups of undergraduates differing in reading ability were tested on a number of reaction-time tasks designed to determine the speed of encoding visual information at several different levels, tests of sensory functions, verbal and quantitative reasoning ability, short-term auditory memory span, and ability to comprehend spoken text.…

Outlines instructional implications of a theory of reading comprehension that holds that a transaction takes place between reader and text during which the reader derives meaning from printed marks based on personal experiences. (AEA)

This study of 78 prelingually deaf children (ages 6-13) who were educated orally found that children up to 9 years old seemed to process written words by means of visual codes. Older children tended to differentiate and preferred either a visual or speech-based strategy, with the latter associated with better reading performance. (Author/JDD)

A study described the cognitive and metacognitive knowledge of a sixth-grade proficient bilingual reader who was a Latina by comparing her reading processes and strategies with those of a marginally proficient bilingual reader and a proficient monolingual reader. Data collection processes included prompted and unprompted think-alouds, interviews,…

Reading encompasses a wide range of verbal processes, among them such simple verbal processes as word decoding, letter recognition, name retrieval, and semantic access. The question is whether simple verbal processing differences are adequate to account for general reading ability differences. Across different verbal domains and different ages,…

In an effort to create a multilevel, interactive, and hypothesis-based model of the reading comprehension process that bridges interdisciplinary gaps in the theory of learning, this report focuses on descriptions of cognitive processes developed in the fields of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, sociolinguistics, linguistics, and…

In response to the assertion that reading is a fixed set of processes that can be identified and studied independently of context, a study was initiated based on the following assumptions: that different types of reading (prose comprehension and text search) can be identified and measured, that reading competencies are highly associated with uses…

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 68 first graders to identify what ideas young readers hold about the reading process. Specifically, the study questioned whether good and poor readers held the same views about how they learned to read, what they and others did as they read, their reading ability, and why people read. The responses of…

Two studies were conducted to determine whether the consonant errors displayed by readers with severe reading disabilities are the result of phonetic rather than visual substitutions. In the first study, the reading and spelling performance of three groups of readers with average IQs but with reading levels two years below grade level, was…

This paper examines the relationship between strategies for recall of verbal material and the reading ability of 10-to-13-year-old children. Sixty-five fifth and sixth graders, whose reading levels were determined by the Gates-MacGinitie Comprehension Test (1964), were given an orally presented word-string repetition task. While performance on…

Oral language is used before written language, according to this paper, which contends that the acquisition of literacy is merely an extension of natural language learning for all children. This view of literacy development as natural is distinguished from the views of those that think language is innate; the naturalness of children learning to…

This study compared the rapid word processing abilities of groups of students in college, fourth grade, second grade, and kindergarten to see if there is a developmental pattern in such skill development, and to see if phonics training should emphasize either letters and the orthographic rules that create words or letter clusters (common words)…

This article reports a study in which fourth graders were tested on their recall of stories they had read. Thrity-two children, divided into two groups of 16 by reading ability, each read two passages and were scored for recall. The passages read were either the original versions of two stories, semantic rewrites (in which anaphoric elements,…

A study was devised for investigating developmental change in the extent to which children use a speech recoding process during silent reading to obtain meaning from sentences. The subjects, 48 second and 48 sixth grade students, were shown a series of single sentences that included equal numbers of sentences at the second, fourth, and sixth grade…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. Among the topics covered in the 26 titles are the following: self concept and reading achievement; eye movement patterns and reading ability; psychological and neuropsychological measures of performance of children with variations in…