ABSTRACT
Investigators of verbal learning have for the most part been interested in listlearning studies. Traditionally, lists of nonsense syllables or words have been the principal learning materials employed, to which lists of unrelated sentences were added more recently. Simultaneously, however, there has been a trickle of studies concerned with text materials. Throughout the history of verbal-learning research, the number of investigations of texts never represented more than a small fraction of the total research output and remained relatively insignificant. Worst of all, it never successfully merged with the main stream of verballearning research and theory. Even such well-known work as that of Bartlett, which was published in 1932, was for a long time regarded by academic psychologists as a slightly exotic curiosity-certainly interesting and probably important, but not of direct relevance for learning theory or models of memory. Much of the work on prose learning during this period was performed by educational psychologists. Only in the last few years has this situation begun to change. It seems possible today that the study of comprehension and memory of texts may finally overcome its status of benign neglect and even assume a central role in the research on cognitive processes.
