This article provides a commentary within the special issue, Integration: The Keystone of Comprehension. According to most contemporary frameworks, a driving force in comprehension is the reader's ability to generate the links among the words and sentences (ideas) in the texts and between the ideas in the text and what the readers already know. As…

There is accumulating evidence that readers continually evaluate the consistency, congruence, and coherence of text by processes of validation. Validation is initiated immediately on stimulus presentation, may proceed nonstrategically, and serves as a criterion for representational updating. However, validation exhibits a variety of deficiencies.…

This article provides a commentary within the special issue, Integration: The Keystone of Comprehension. According to most contemporary frameworks, a driving force in comprehension is the reader's ability to generate the links among the words and sentences (ideas) in the texts and between the ideas in the text and what the readers already know. As…

The present set of 7 experiments systematically examined the effectiveness of adding causal explanations to simple refutations in reducing or eliminating the impact of outdated information on subsequent comprehension. The addition of a single causal-explanation sentence to a refutation was sufficient to eliminate any measurable disruption in…

In 2 experiments, the authors used an eye tracking while reading methodology to examine how different configurations of common noun phrases versus unusual noun phrases (NPs) influenced the difference in processing difficulty between sentences containing object- and subject-extracted relative clauses. Results showed that processing difficulty was…

Mental representations formed from words or phrases may vary considerably in their feature-based complexity. Modern theories of retrieval in sentence comprehension do not indicate how this variation and the role of encoding processes should influence memory performance. Here, memory retrieval in language comprehension is shown to be influenced by…

This monograph, the sixth in a series on the development of the reading process, is concerned with the development of reading comprehension. In the first chapter, "Comprehension in Listening and Reading: Same or Different," Joseph H. Danks analyzes the evidence for the proposition that tbe comprehension processes for language in print and language…

Research Findings: This study compared the unique effects of training low-income mothers in dialogic reading versus elaborative reminiscing on children's oral language and emergent literacy. Thirty-three low-income parents of 4-year-old children attending Head Start were randomly assigned to either dialogic reading, elaborative reminiscing, or a…

Results of a study show that reading and listening comprehension depend on the same language processing skills and that localized processing skills, not global organizational skills, are a major source of individual differences in language processing. (JM)

The purpose of this study was to examine the use of auditory memory tests to predict reading achievement of elementary pupils. Auditory memory was defined as the ability of an individual to reproduce digits, letters, sounds, words, or serial commands, immediately and correctly, in sequential order, after having heard them only once. One hundred…

More than 100 college students enrolled in a reading and study skills course participated in a study designed to show the effects of retrieval speed on adult reading comprehension. A microcomputer version of the Posner task was used to measure memory retrieval speed, and reading and listening comprehension were measured from McCall-Crabbs…

The development of a story grammar represents an attempt to describe the higher order cognitive structures that are used to encode, represent, and retrieve information from stories such as folktales or fables. These structures, defined as a set of rewrite rules, specify the types of information that should occur in stories and the types of logical…

This paper develops the thesis that the knowledge a person possesses has a potent influence on what he or she will learn and remember from exposure to discourse. After outlining some assumptions about the characteristics of the structures (schemata) in which existing knowledge is packaged, a theory of the processes involved in assimilating the…

Noting that the sentence memory models formulated in the 1970s need to be altered so as to be consistent with the fact that people use prior knowledge to process new information, this report discusses issues to be considered in making such an alteration. The report focuses on three questions: (1) What conditions lead people to elaborate and…

Describes two experiments showing that experienced readers use text signals to guide their attention to relevant information in a text. Indicates that subjects (1) took longer to read a summary sentence if it was signaled in advance, especially poor readers, and (2) recalled important information better if the information was signaled. (JD)