This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 20 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) reading readiness, linguistic awareness, and nonverbal problem solving ability in relation to first grade reading achievement; (2) predictive accuracy of third and fifth grade students on linguistic and nonlinguistic comprehension measures; (3) the parameters of difficulty in narrative and expository prose texts; (4) developmental influences on reading readiness in kindergarten children; (5) prior knowledge and reading comprehension text bias; (6) the reliability and validity of the cloze and maze procedures as measures of comprehension of a social studies text; (7) using a group informal reading inventory to assess the reading performance of English-as-a-second-language students; (8) the relationship between vocabulary and readability of science textbooks for grades four, five, and six; (9) the relationships between reading performance and three measures of distractibility in young children; and (10) the use of a cloze test to judge the readability of a proposed science text for sixth grade students. (FL)