The last 20 years have witnessed a revolution in reading research. Cognitive psychologists, using high-speed computers to aid in the collection and analysis of data, have developed tools that have begun to answer questions that were previously thought unanswerable. These tools allow for a "chronometric," or moment-to-moment, analysis of the reading process. Foremost among them is the use of the record of eye movements to help reveal the underlying perceptual and cognitive processes of reading. This volume provides a coherent framework for the research accomplished on the reading process over the past 15 years. It emphasizes how readers go about extracting information from the printed page and how they comprehend the text.

The need to know why as well as how children and youth respond as they do to reading instruction has guided the selection of this book’s content. The second edition of this title, originally published in 1990, has retained and elaborated upon the three major themes previously presented: that reading is a linguistic process; that motivation, the affective domain, may be as important in learning to read as the cognitive domain; and that the reality of learning theory is to be found in the mechanisms of the brain where information is mediated and memory traces are stored. The text integrates views from cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, and neuropsychology as they relate to reading and writing. A learning-motivation model is provided to present associative learning, conceptualization, and self-directed reading in a hierarchical relationship with distinct cognitive and affective components. The distinction between beginning and proficient reading is maintained throughout the text.

Originally published in 1981, this title is based on the author’s doctoral thesis and the research reported was carried out at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford. By the 1980s it was generally recognised that there are a number of children of adequate general intelligence who nevertheless experience inordinate difficulties in learning to read. This book examines some of the possible reasons for those children’s reading difficulties, and at the same time explores the basis of a teaching technique which was reputed to help them to learn to read. Although the terminology is very much of the time, this book will still be of interest to those concerned with the reasons behind the difficulties children have in learning to read.

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1908 Edition.