Bereiter, Carl. "Implications of Connectionism for Thinking about Rules." Educational Researcher 20 (1991): 10-16.(S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Bormuth, J. R. et al. Children's Comprehension of Between and Within Sentence Syntactic Structures, " Journal of Educational Psychology. 61 (1970), 349-357. [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____ . "An Operational Definition of Comprehension Instruction." In K.S. Goodman & J. Fleming (eds) Psycholinguistics and the Teaching of Reading. Newark, Del.: International Reading Association, 1969. [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____ .  ed. Readability in 1968. Champaign: NCTE, 1968. [S= Dawkins, 45]

Botel, M., and A. Granowsky. "A Formula for Measuring Syntactic Complexity: A Directional Effort," Elementary English, 49 (April 1972), 513-516. [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____, J. Dawkins, and A. Gramowski. "A Syntactic Complexity Formula," in W.H. MacGinite (ed.) Assessment Problems in Reading. Newark, Del. Int. Reading Assoc., 1973. 77-86. [S= Dawkins, 45]

Britton, B.K., S.M. Glynn, B.J.F. Meyer, and M.J. Penland. (1982)  Effects of Text Structure on Use of Cognitive Capacity During Reading. Journal of Educational Psychology, 74, 51-61.

Chafe, Wallace and Jane Danielewicz. "Properties of Spoken and Written Language." Comprehending Oral and Written Language. Ed. Rosalind Horowitz and S. Jay Samuels. San Diego: Academic, 1987. 83-112. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Chall, J.S. "Readability: An Appraisal of Research and Application," Educational Research Monograph No. 30. Columbus, OH: Ohio State Univ., 1958. [S= Dawkins, 45]

Clark, Herbert and Eve Clark. Psychology and Language. New York: Harcourt, 1977. (Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Coleman, E.B., and P.J. Blumenfeld. "Cloz Scores of Nominalizations and Their Grammatical Transformations Using Active Verbs," Psychological Reports, 13 (1963), 651-654. [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____ . "The Comprehensibility of Several Grammatical Transformations," Journal of Applied Psychology. 48 (June 1964) 186-190. [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____ . "Experimental Studies of Readability, Part I," Elementary English, 45 (1968), 166-178. [S= Dawkins, 45]

____ . "Experimental Studies of Readability, Part II," Elementary English, 45 (1968), 316-323. [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____ . "Learning of Prose Written in Four Grammatical Transformations," Journal of Applied Technology, 49 (1966), 332-341. [S= Dawkins, 45]

Cooper, Charles, and Anthony Petrosky, "A Psycholinguistic View of the  Reading Process," Journal of Reading 20 (1976):185-207. (S=TETYC,  Feb85, 31). [HX, R; argues for a psychoinguistic approach to teaching reading, but irrelevant to the teaching of syntax]

Davey, B. and G.B. Macready. (1985) "Prerequisite Relations among Inference Tasks for Good and Poor Readers." Journal of Educational Psychology, 77, 539-552.

Davidson, Alice, and Georgia M. Green, Eds. (1988) Linguistic Complexity and Text Comprehension: Readability Issues Reconsidered. (S=Kohl, 990

Dawkins, John, Syntax and Readability. Newark, Del.: International Reading Association. 1975. [HX, R. transformationallly based, mainly on up to sixth grade; interesting, but deals with very short sentences]

Fagan, W.T. "The Relationship Between Reading Difficulty and the NBumber and Type of Sentence Transformations," unpublished dissertation, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, 1970.  [S= Dawkins, 45]

_____ . "Transformations and Comprehension," Reading Teacher, 25 (Novemnber 1971). [S= Dawkins, 45]

Ferreira, F., anc C. Clifton. (1986) "The Independence of Syntactic Processing." Journal of Memory and Language. 25:348-368. [S=Kohl, 99]

Flores d'Arcais, G. B. "The Perception of Complex Sentences." Studies in the Perception of Language. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978. 155-186.. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Fodor, Jerry, Thomas Bever, and Merrill Garrett. The Psychology of Language: An Introduction to Psycholinguistics and Generative Grammar. New York: McGraw- Hill, 1974. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Fodor, J., and M. Garrett. "Some Syntactic Determinants of Sentential Complexity." Perception and Psychophysics, 2 (1967), 289-296. [S= Dawkins, 46]

Frazier, L., and K. Rayner. (1982) "Making and correcting errors during sentence comprehension: Eye movements in the analysis of structurally ambiguous sentences." Cognitive Psychology 14:178-210. (S=Kohl, 99)

Frederiksen, Carl H. "Effects of Contex-Induced Processing Operations on  Semantic Information Acquired from Discourse." Cognitive Psychology. 7  (1975), 139-166. (S=The Writer's Mind, 65.)

Garrett, Merrill F. (1990). "Sentence Processing." In Daniel N. Osherson and Howard Lasnik, eds. Language: An Invitation to Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 133-175. (S=Kohl, 99)

Gibson, Elaine and Harry Levin. The Psychology of Reading. Cambridge, Mass.  MIT Press, 1975. 

Gleitman, L. R. and H. Gleitman. Phrase and Paraphrase. NY: W.W. Norton. 1970.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Goodman, Kenneth. "Reading: A Psycholinguistic Guessing Game," Journal of the Reading Specialist 4 (May 67):126-135. (S=The Writer's Mind, 157.)

Gough, P.B. "Grammatical Transformations and Speed of Understanding," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 4 (1965), 107-111. [S= Dawkins, 46]

Granowsky, A. "A Formula for the Analysis of Syntactic Complexity of Primary Grade Reading Materials," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1971.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Hakes, David T. (1972) "Effects of Reducing Complement Constructions on Sentence Comprehension." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior 11: 278-286. (S=Kohl 99)

Hakes, David T., and Donald J. Foss. (1970) "Decision Processes during Sentence Comprehension: Effects of surface structure reconsidered." Perception and Psychophysics 8:413-416. (S=Kohl 99)

Hakes, David T., Judith S. Evans, and Linda L. Brannon. (1976) "Understanding Sentences with Relative Clauses." Memory and Cognition. 4:3, 283-290. (S=Kohl, 99)

Henry, George. Teaching Reading as Concept Development Newark, Del.:  International Reading Association, 1974. (S=The Writer's Mind, 157.)

Hittleman, D. R. "Seeking a Psycholinguistic Definition of Readability," Reading Teacher, 26 (May 1973). [S= Dawkins, 46]

Huggins, A.W.F., and Marilyn Jager Adams. (1980) "Syntactic Aspects of Reading Comprehension." In Rand J. Spiro, Bertam C. Bruce, and William F. Brewer, eds. Theoretical Issues in Reading Comprehension. Hillsdale, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 87-112. (S=Kohl, 99)

Isakson, Carol S. and Jan H. Spyridakis, "The influence of semantics and syntax on what readers remember," Technical Communication, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Aug 99), 366-381. ProQuest Direct. Penn Coll. Lib., Williamsport. 2 Feb 2000. <http://www.proquest.umi.com/pdqweb>. [H. See Spyridakis]

(MIMC:)
     In addition to verb voice, clause structures--structures that contain a subject and a verb--affect comprehension and recall. Readers recall independent clauses ("He used the help system") faster than dependent clauses--clauses containing a subordinating conjunction ("Before he used the system,....") (Townsend, Ottaviano, and Bever 1979). In addition, readers show poorer comprehension of important information in dependent clauses than of important information in independent clauses (Creaghead and Donnelly (1982). Readers also make more comprehension errors with relative clauses--clauses that contain a relative pronoun such as who, that or which -- that are embedded in the middle of a sentence ("The report that John wrote won an award") than with relative clauses that are at the end of a sentence ("The society gave an award to the report that John wrote") (Creaghead and Donnelly 1982). Larkin and Burns (1977) similarly found decreased recall and comprehension of information in embedded relative clauses."

---

     It is interesting to note the percentage of IUs that contained independent clauses or portions of them and were also rated as more important: 79% for the Kuiper text and 89% for the Sensors text. Our raters who identified information importance and the authors of the texts must have honored this relationship of important information and independent clauses at some intuitive level. It would be fascinating to know whether the raters identified IUs as more important because they perceived the information as more important in and of itself, or because the IUs contained independent clauses or portions of them. And it would be fascinating to know whether writers consciously or subconsciously place important information in independent clauses, as apparently is the case with our two texts. We suspect this may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum.
     However, the strong pattern of a higher percentage of IUs that were both more important and contained independent clauses occurred only in the Kuiper text. More documents need to be tested to confirm whether authors, raters, and readers perceive the relationship of information importance and clause structures in the same way.

Jarvella, Robert and Steven Herman. "Clause structure of Sentences and Speech Processing." Perception and Psychophysics 11 (1972): 381-383. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Johnson, R.E. "Recall of Prose as a Function of the Structural Importaance of the Linguistic Units. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 9, 12-20, 1970.

Just, Marcel A., and Patricia A. Carpenter. (1987) The Psychology of Reading and Language Comprehension. Boston,: M.A: Allyn and Bacon. (S=Kohl, 99)

Katz, E. W. and S.B. Brent. "Understanding Connectives," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 7 (1968), 501-509.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Kimball, John. (1973) "Seven Principles of Surface Structure Parsing in Natural Language." Cognition 2:15-47. (S=Kohl, 99)

Kintsch, Walter. "Approaches to the Study of the Psychology of Language." Talking Minds: The Study of Language in Cognitive Science. Eds. Thomas Bever, John Carroll and Lance Miller. Cambridge: MIT P, 1984. 111-145. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Klare, G. R. The Measurement of Readability. Ames, IA: Iowa State UP, 1963.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

_____ . "The Role of Word Frequency in Readability." Elementary English, 45 (1968), 12-22.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Kohl, John R. (1999) "Improving Translatability and Readability with Syntactic Cues." Technical Communication. 46:2 (May 99), 149-166. [H, Bib done]

Levelt, Willem. "A Survey of Studies in Sentence Perception: 1970-1976. "Studies in the Perception of Language. Eds. Willem Levelt and G.B. Flores d*Arcais. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1978. 1-74. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Martin, E., and H.H. Roberts. (1966) "Grammatical factors in Sentence Retention." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 5: 211-218. (S=Kohl, 99)

McClelland, James, David Rumelhart, and G. Hinton. "The Appeal of Parallel Distributed Processing." Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Volume 1: Foundations. Eds. James McClelland and David Rumelhart. Cambridge: MIT P, 1986. 3-44.(S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Menyuk, P. "Syntactic Competence and Reading" In Stark, J. and Wurzel, S.  (eds.) Language, Learning and Reading Disabilities: A New Decade. Cambridge, MA.: Proceedings of the CUNY Conference, 1983. (S=Eng Ed,  May 85, 90).

Meyer, B.J.F. (1975) The Organization of Prose and Its Effects on Memory. North-Holland, Amersterdam. (S=Spyridakis, 1989, b)

Nurss, J. R. "Children's Reading: Syntactic Structure and Comprehension," unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1966.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Olds, H. F. An Experimental Study of Syntactical Factors Influencing Children's Comprehension of Certain Complex Relationships, Report No. 4, Cambridge, Mass.: Center for Research and Development on Educational Differences, Harvard Univ., 1968.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Olson, D. R. "Language and Thought: Aspects of a Cognitive Theory of Semantics," Psychological Review, 1970.  [S= Dawkins, 46; no vol or pages given]

Perfetti, C. A. "Lexical Density and Phrase Structure Depth as Variables in Sentence Retention," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8 (1969), 719-724.  [S= Dawkins, 46]

Rayner, K., M. Carlson, and L. Frazier. (1983) "The interaction of syntax and semantics during sentence processing: Eye movements in the analysis of semantically biased sentences." Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior. 22: 358-372. (S=Kohl, 99)

Rygiel, Mary Ann. "Readability Formulas: Pluses and Minuses." TETYC, 9  (1982): 45-49. (S=TETYC, Oct 84, 51.)

Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader The Text The Poem. Carbondale: Southern  Illinois UP, 1978. (S=TETYC, Feb 85, 31).

Rumelhart, David and James McClelland. "On Learning the Past Tenses of English Verbs." Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition. Volume 2: Psychological and Biological Models. Eds. James McClelland and David Rumelhart. Cambridge: MITP, 1986. 216-271. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Sauer, L. E. "Fourth Grade Children's Knowledge of Grammatical Structures," Elementary English, Oct. 1970, 807-813.  [S= Dawkins, 47]

Scardamelia, Marlene, Carl Bereiter and Hillel Goelman. "The Role of Production Factors in Writing Ability." What Writers Know: The Language, Process, and Structure of Written Discourse. New York: Academic P, 1982. 173-210. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Schlesinger, I. M. Sentence Structure and the Reading Process. The Hague: Mouton, 1968.  [S= Dawkins, 47]

Schluroff, Michael, Thomas E. Zimmerman, R.B. Freeman Jr., Klaus Hofmeister, Thomas Lorscheid, and Arno Weber. (1986). "Pupillary responses to syntactic ambiguity of sentences." Brain and Language 27: 322-344. (S=Kohl, 99)

Slobin, D. I. "Grammatical Transformatioons and Sentence Comprehension in Childhood and Adulthood," Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 5 (1966), 219-227.  [S= Dawkins, 47]

Smith, Frank. Psycholinguistics and Reading. New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. 

_____ . Reading without Nonsense. NY: Teachers College, 1979. [H, R, N7]

_____ Understanding Reading: A Psycholinguistic Analysis of Reading and Learning to Read. 2nd ed. New York:Holt, 1978. 

Spyridakis, Jan H. (and C.T. Standal.) (1986) Headings, Previews, Logical Connectives: Effects on Reading Comprehension. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. 16, 343-354.

_____ . (1987) The Effects of Signals in Expository Prose on Reading Comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 22:3, 285-298.

_____ (1989) "Signalling Efects: A Review of the Research -- Part I." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. Vol. 19 (3), 227-240. [H,R]

_____.(1989b)  "Signalling Effects: Increased Content Rentention and New Answers -- Part II." Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. Vol. 19 (4), 395-415. [H,R -- on Idea Units]

Wakefield, James, Peggy Bradley, Byong-Hee Lee Yom, and Eugene Doughtie. "Language Switching and Constituent Structure." Language and Speech 18 (1975): 14-19. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Waters, H. S. (1983)."Superordinate-Subordinate Structure in Prose Passages and the Importance of Propositions. Journal of Experimental Psychology. 9:2, 294-299.

Williams, James D. "Rule-governed Approaches to Language and Composition." Written Communication 10 (1993): 542-568. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)

Wilson, Paul T. Let's Think about Reading and Reading Instruction: A Primer for Tutors and Teachers. Dubuque, IA:  Kendall/Hunt, 1988. [H,R]

Wingfiled, Arthur and Jan Klein. "Syntactic Structure and Acoustic Pattern in Speech Perception." Perception and Psychophysics 9 (1971): 23-25. (S=Dykstra, Pam, ATEG Listserver)
 

This border presents
 Pierre-Auguste Renoir's
(1841-1919)
Woman Reading
1874-76, Musée d'Orsay at Paris
Carol Gerten's Fine Art http://metalab.unc.edu/cgfa/

Click here for the directory of my backgrounds based on art.
[For educational use only]