The eye movements of two college graduates were monitored in a study of flexible reading, which is defined as the ability to adjust one's rate and approach to reading according to the purpose of reading, the difficulty of the material, and one's knowledge of the subject matter. The subjects were told to read an excerpt from a tenth grade biology…

College-adult reading research trends are discussed. The reading process; the influence of vision, perception, and personality; and program outcomes are noted as major trends of past studies, and a list of mistaken assumptions in these earlier studies is given. Present research shifts to the study of the role of both teacher and student…

Using time-compressed speech methodology, a program was developed which attempted to improve the reading rate and comprehension of U.S. Navy personnel with low reading ability. Four groups of trainees were tested. One group read training text while simultaneously listening to a speeded auditory version of the same text. A second group listened to…

In this study, rate controlled speech is defined as speech that is reproduced in less time or in more time than the time required for its original production. The particular comprehension skills of interest were: the ability to detect main ideas; the ability to determine supporting details; and the ability to draw conclusions. These skills were…

The Modified Packard method of discourse analysis, based on eight functional aspects of discourse relationships--elaboration, reason, comparison/contrast, temporal, emphasis, coordination, subordination, and superordination--was applied to the open-ended recalls of randomly selected honors students trained in the Evelyn Wood method and to a…

This study investigated the relationship between rate of information processing and critical reading and the anciallary effect of anxiety on the two variables. A tenth grade sample, consisting of 52 fast readers and 52 slow readers, was identified. All subjects in the sample had intelligence quotients of 120 or higher and vocabulary and…

This study investigated fourth-grade children's ability to identify and retrieve tachistoscopically presented words in relation to their rated ability on both reading speed and comprehension. No significant difference was found between fast and slow readers in either recognition or retrieval. High comprehension children had significantly lower…

Students with low reading levels in colleges of "further education" would benefit both personally and vocationally from a developmental reading program embracing three principal aims: (1) to increase the range of available reading speeds from 200-300 words per minute to 400, 500, or 800 words per minute without loss of comprehension; (2) to show…

The "page-at-a-glance" reading phenomenon in two gifted readers using only monocular vision was investigated. The specific questions to be answered in this preliminary study were (1) What is the average duration of fixations made by gifted readers while reading a somewhat familiar article? and (2) What degree of comprehension on materials of…

In addition to using chunked items, the Carver-Darby Chunked Reading Test differs from the traditional reading test in the way it was developed and the manner in which the test scores are interpreted. The criterion for developing and revising test items was based on the inability of the readers to answer test items correctly before reading the…

In a series of three experiments involving 104 individuals, the effect of chunking sentences (the spatial separation of sentences into small groups of meaningfully related words) upon the reading rate and comprehension of mature readers was investigated. Passages and questions from a standardized reading test were displayed via an…

A study made with three specially selected groups of students reading similar material revealed that there was little difference in speed and comprehension between reading printed material in books or on microfilm. One test group was composed of students trained to read in thousands of words per minute. (Author)

This study is concerned with the measurement of reading flexibility. The contents include: "Review of Literature," which discusses the different concepts of reading flexibility and presents several definitions followed by a summary of variables revealed in these definitions; "Synthesis of Strengths and Weaknesses," which looks…

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the potential usefulness of compressed speech as a reading improvement technique. It was hypothesized that reading comprehension, reading rate, and listening ability would show improvement when highly speeded auditory presentations of connected meaningful material were employed systematically over…

The primary problem was concerned with the uses of hypnosis and waking suggestions as means of improving reading efficiency. A second problem concerned rectifying research design inadequacies related to hypnosis experiments. The procedure used pretest scores secured for rate, comprehension, and vocabulary. Subjects were placed in experimental and…