The Effects of Directive Cues on the Organization of Memory and Recall in Good and Poor Readers

The question of whether directive cues would facilitate recall and clustering of verbal materials in good and poor readers was investigated in two experiments. The overall results indicated strong and positive effects of directive cues on the subjects’ recall and organization of memory. More importantly, the results of the first experiment suggest that poor readers were unadaptive learners who appeared to have a performance deficit, rather than an ability deficit. The results of the second experiment buttressed the performance deficit view of the poor performance of poor readers.