Two experiments investigated the relationship between cultural schemata and reading comprehension.Black and white eighth graders read a passage that dealt with an instance of "sounding" or "playing the dozens," a form of verbal ritual insult predominantly found in the black community. Black subjects tended to interpret the passage as being about verbal play, whereas white subjects tended to interpret it as being about physical aggression. Scores on theme-revealing disambiguations and intrusions and on an inference probe task showed a close relationship to the subjects' cultural background. The evidence shows that cultural schemata can influence how prose material is A tradition of research which can be traced to Bartlett (1932) has assessed the effect of beliefs on the learning and remembering of information in brief texts. A recent example of research of this type is a study by Read and Rosson (Note 1). They used a questionnaire to identify people who were either strongly for or strongly against nuclear power.Those identified were asked to read a passage about a fire at a nuclear power station. The results on a multiple choice test given immediately after the passage showed little influence on beliefs. However, when the test was delayed one or two weeks, people tended to distort the passage in a manner consistent with their beliefs. Subjects who favored nuclear power were able to reject antinuclear statements which had no basis in the passage, but they tended to accept spurious, pronuclear statements. Cultural Schemata and Reading Comprehension 3