To identify children who use a perseverative text processing strategy and to examine the effects of this strategy on recall and comprehenson, 255 fifth and sixth graders were screened for large differences between regressed standard scores for inductively (main idea last) and deductively (main idea first) structured paragraphs. Sixteen Ss were matched with a comparison group who performed as well over all, but whose scores did not show such differences. The two groups completed four listening and reading tasks dealing with inductively and deductively styled paragraphs. Results showed that Ss whose screening scores had large differences performed on all tasks as if they were using perseverative strategies. Analyses of the timed tests indicated that these students were reading the entire text, not processing only the beginning information and omitting the rest. Recall task results indicated equal total recall by the two groups, but the comparison group used more of the signalling terms from the texts. The perseverative group scored low on the inductively structured items on the oral word finding task. (Author/CL)