This paper analyzes the relative contributions of general reading comprehension and domain knowledge to subject matter text learning. The paper points out the limits of each factor in explaining text learning and summarizes some recent studies that support the complementary role played by each factor. A two-factor account of text learning (general…

A study compared students' cognitive word knowledge of the cognates of "think" and "know" within a theoretical framework focused on hierarchical levels of meaning. Subjects were 31 fifth, 32 seventh, and 21 tenth graders attending single-gender private schools in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, and 70 college…

Finds that fourth graders were more likely than fifth and sixth graders to understand story characters in terms of immediate situation rather than overall story context and in terms of individual perspectives rather than social relationships. Finds that adults differ from fifth and sixth graders in the same way. (SR)

Compares fifth-grade teachers' views of teaching a content area literacy lesson with those of literacy professors. Finds that the majority of teachers followed the text closely and took a dominant role as transmitter of knowledge, while professors were not constrained by the text and emphasized a constructivist view of learning. Discusses…

The relationships between reading comprehension level, digit span, and short-term memory for Morse code-like temporal patterns were investigated. College students performed better when the first pattern was auditory. No relationship for college or fifth-grade students was found between digit span and accuracy in comparing patterns of tones.…

Differences between metaphors and similes have often been overlooked in the experimental literature, and the comparison theory addressing comprehension of simile may be less appropriate to the more transformational properties of metaphor. It is proposed that one of the variables associated with the difference is affective response, leading to the…

The ability to select (a) suitable retrieval cues and (b) the main ideas of prose passages was examined in college students and in school students between fifth and twelfth grades. The ability to select the main elements of texts improved over the entire age range studied and was not affected by experience studying and recalling the passage.…

Describes three studies funded by the ALAN Foundation: the first study examines the potential impact that young adult literature has on a group of high school students; the second examines use of young adult literature in middle school classes in New York City; and the third study surveys 60 professors about their young adult literature courses.…

The strategies of children and college students were examined as they attempted to study texts. College students, under various intentional learning instructions, displayed a repetitive diagnostic pattern. Following extended study they improved recall of important, but not unimportant, elements of texts. Eleventh and twelfth graders conformed to…

Two related studies were conducted to determine whether students read all-capital text and mixed text displayed on a computer screen with the same speed and accuracy. Seventy-seven college students read M. A. Tinker's "Basic Reading Rate Test" displayed on a PLATO computer screen. One treatment consisted of paragraphs in all-capital type…

A study was conducted to determine the relationship between processing load and ability to locate text segments containing intersentence contradictions. It was hypothesized that less able readers fail to exhibit comprehension monitoring skills because most tasks overload their processing capacity. Subjects were 87 fourth and sixth grade students…

Predicting that when presented with a general context children and adults would produce different specific inferences, a study examined children's and adults' script representations of a common event and the use of representation in comprehension. In the first phase of the study, 23 fourth grade and 48 college students were asked to generate…

The proceedings of the eleventh annual meeting of the College Reading Association with a theme of "Professional Focus on Reading," consisted of the following papers: (1) "President's Address" (W. H. Cooper); (2) "What Lies Ahead in Primary Reading?" (M. C. Austin); (3) "The Causes and Correction of Verbalism in…

A study investigated how students' mental representation of an expository text and the inferences they used in summarizing varied as a function of text difficulty and of differences in the task. Subjects, 96 college students and students from grades 6 and 10, wrote summaries of expository texts and answered orally several probe questions about the…