A study tested a theory of inferencing strategies. Subjects were 40 sixth grade students of average intelligence from a large Western Canadian city who were divided according to reading proficiency and background knowledge. Six passages, three familiar to the students and three unfamiliar to them, were written by the researcher in such a manner…

Two studies using the same texts and procedures but different experimental designs (1) evaluated an instrument designed to identify children who overrely on their prior knowledge in the interpretation of written text, and (2) investigated how degree of congruency of information interacts with degree of explicitness and level of staging to affect…

One year after they had participated in the validation of the Estes Reading Attitude Scale, 75 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders were asked to respond to and comment on the questions in an interview situation. Thirty-six of these students had scored low on the attitude inventory but high on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills; 39 had scored high on the…

A study was conducted to determine whether vocabulary instruction in the "little" words would enhance children's performance on mathematical word problems. Thirty-eight fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students were pretested in mathematics computation and were assigned to experimental or control groups. The control groups received drill…

A study compared cognitive style (field dependence/independence) and learning style (reflection/impulsion) with reading achievement. Twenty-six sixth grade students were administered the group Embedded Figures Test to determine field dependence/independence and the Matching Familiar Figures Test to determine reflective and implusive students.…

Twelve groups consisting of 277 fourth, fifth, and sixth graders participated in a study of the effects of teaching ten concepts of logical thinking, on ability to read critically. The two-month program of instruction consisted of a direct oral presentation of the ten selected concepts followed by practice in using the concepts. Analysis of…

Reviews 11 studies originally analyzed by Bergquist to support the contention that children can be trained to increase their reading rates without any loss of comprehension along with more recent work. Concludes that rapid reading results in a decrease in the accuracy of comprehension. (FL)

Reports on a study investigating the effect of prior knowledge of written prose in intact, topic sentence deleted, and topic sentence and concluding sentence deleted conditions, and advances a methodology for determining prior knowledge. (FL)

Examines the relationship between the paraphrasing skills of intermediate grade students and their proficiency in reading comprehension and the sensitivity of three methods of assessing paraphrasing skills. (FL)

A study examined the contribution of morphological knowledge to the reading and spelling achievement of fourth grade children. Results in the study were expected to indicate that morphology contributes to reading and spelling achievement beyond phonological and orthographic awareness. Participants were 58 native English-speaking fourth graders…

This study was conducted to determine whether the Success for All whole school reform model or Comer School Development Program had a significant effect on fourth graders' reading comprehension. Twelve students in experimental group A were homogeneously grouped to be taught using the Success for All whole school reform model. Twelve students in…

This study tested poor readers' facilities at detecting informational inconsistency in a text given at three levels of explicitness in prereading direction. Experimental materials presented a generalizability dilemma, which is discussed in detail. (Author/GK)

Focuses on what sixth-grade students know about the organizational features of prose and whether the use of specific organizational patterns (top-level structures) facilitates written recall of expository prose. (HOD)

Explores whether fourth-grade students who were taught specific research-based strategies using a transactional strategies instruction approach would improve in comprehension achievement and would be more engaged during reading. Notes that the treatment group was taught predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing strategies; and the…

Examines students' ability to understand definitions of novel verbs--in 2 experiments upper elementary students received definitions of pseudowords paired with sentences using those words and evaluated use as appropriate for definition given. Finds students' judgments about these sentences were not substantially different from chance, suggesting…