Abstract. To investigate the applicability of schema-theoretic notions to young children's comprehension of textually explicit and inferrable information, slightly above-average second grade readers with strong and weak schemata for knowledge about spiders read a passage about spiders and answered wh-questions tapping both explicitly stated information and knowledge that necessarily had to be inferred from the text. Main effects were found for strength of prior knowledge [p < .01), and question type (p < .01). Simple effects tests indicated a significant prior knowledge effect on the inferrable knowledge (p < .025) but not on explicitly stated information. A follow-up study was conducted to verify the fact that the question type effect was not due to the chance allocation of inherently easier questions to one of the two question types. We found a reliable decrease in question difficulty attributable to cueing propositional relations explicitly in the text (p < .01). These data were interpreted as supporting and extending the arguments emerging from various "schema theories".The present study was designed to assess the role that background knowledge plays in determining young children's ability to process relationships that are explicitly and fully specified in a text in comparison to those that are only partially specified by the same text. The study stems from the theoretical tradition of schema theory as explicated by Rumelhart and Ortony (1977), Rumelhart (in press) and Anderson (1977), as well as the research tradition established by Bransford and McCarrell (1973), Bransford and Johnson (1973), R. Anderson, Spiro, and M. Anderson (1977), and Anderson, Reynolds, Schauert, and Goetz (1977.Schema theory suggests that schemata serve at least two important functions during comprehension. First, they provide a framework for classifying concepts 202Journal of Reading Behavior presented in a text. Hence, the stronger the framework, the more likely concepts are to be classified and available for subsequent retrieval from long term memory. R. Anderson, Spiro. and M. Anderson (1977) found evidence for this generalization: Subjects who encountered certain items of food within a restaurant schema recalled those items better than subjects who encountered the same items within a grocery shopping schema. Bransford and Johnson (1973) found that subjects given a passage theme in the form of a title or a picture before reading an obscure passage recalled significantly more textually presented concepts than those not given a theme or given a theme after reading.Another corollary of this function is that concepts presented in text will be remembered as a function of the schema in which they are initially encoded into memory. Anderson et al. (1977) found that recall and comprehension of passages which invited two schematic interpretations (wrestling vs. a prison break or cardplaying vs. music rehearsal) was highly related to the background knowledge of the readers and/or environment in which the testing occurred. Physical educa...

This article reports observations made to explore students' changing awareness of the characteristics of text, self as reader and writer, and monitoring strategies during the reading and writing of narrative and expository text. Information was obtained from sixth-grade students at the beginning of the year, at year end and triangulated, where possible, with data from a larger study which focused on improving students' knowledge and use of text structure as an aid to comprehension and writing. Within the limitations of such exploratory observations as this one, several trends can still be noted. These include: an increased awareness of text structure, particularly indications of elaborated schemata for narrative and expository text structure; knowledge about the importance of affect in personal decisions made on strategy use; the gradual awareness of oneself as an employer of a variety of sensemaking strategies during reading and writing; and a slight shift to greater use of a number of self-monitoring strategies.

Using both qualitative and quantitative measures the study examined (a) the contexts for use of knowledge about expository text structure and (b) the ways in which students used text structure knowledge. In this facet of a larger study, the classroom of 28 sixth grade students participated in explicit text structure instruction over a nine-week time period. Retro-spective interpretative probes in a structured interview followed written recall and composition tasks. Findings from the interviews suggest that following the instructional phase (but not prior to instruction) students used their knowledge of text structure in a variety of contexts during reading (for example, when teacher directed, if the topic was familiar, if the expository texts were interesting, etc.), during writing (in social studies and science, when writing reports, etc), during everyday life (when making a grocery list, when reading a recipe, when visiting a museum, in oral communication, etc.). The interview data also suggested that knowledge of structure was used as a framework during reading and recall of materials read, and, perhaps most saliently, in the process of planning a composition. Prior to instruction, interview data had revealed a lack of awareness of knowledge about the use of structure. Comparisons of the pre and posttest reading recalls revealed a greater adherence to the author's organization. Comparisons of pre and posttest compositions showed (a) an increase in frequency in imposing distinct and explicit superordinate and subordinate macrostructures on the posttest compositions, as well as (b) an increase in the number and type of directional words used. Further research on contexts of expository text use should consider using composition tasks that more closely resemble content area essay writing.

It is widely accepted that early experiences colour the way in which children view the world and in particular their relationships with other people. In this article, Christine Gordon describes a programme of intervention with children who have attachment difficulties as a result of living in trauma during infancy. The article looks at developing a theoretical framework for understanding the ways in which early trauma affects a child at psychological, emotional and physiological levels. It describes an approach to parenting which is more effective than the traditional methods which tend to work better with children who have had healthy and relatively trauma-free early childhoods. The author briefly examines how this approach can be used with other forms of intervention which work more directly with children in helping them to untangle early experiences and make sense of their history.

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