Studies in Text Comprehension: Toward a Model for Learning from Reading

Interest in "learning" has fluctuated more widely in the past decades than women's fashions. If my memory serves me right, I did not hear a single lecture or discussion on learning as a graduate student in Vienna in the 1950s. When I came to America, however, learning was almost the sole topic where I went to graduate school, and I quickly succumbed to the fascination of habit strength and drive–reward interactions. However, I had hardly graduated when all that became passé, and learning, together with my beloved Markov models, disappeared into history's storage closet. The students at Colorado during the past 10 years have heard about as much about "learning" as I had years ago at Vienna. What has happened? Has America caught up with Europe? Or have we relapsed into the dark ages?