ABSTRACT. There is growing evidence that validation at multiple levels of representation is one essential criterion of attentive reading. Validation refers to the reader's ongoing assessment of the consistency, coherence, and congruence of text. During the past quarter century, my collaborators and I have scrutinized the processes of text validation. My approach to the validation of explicit text content invokes the assumptions (1) that validation is afforded by passive retrieval processes, (2) that those processes resemble those of intentional verification, and (3) that validation often fails. Empirical studies have supported assumptions 1 and 2. Ongoing experiments reveal that, notwithstanding assumption 3, readers' exhibit marked resilience to detect arguably inconspicuous text inconsistencies. Studies of the validation of text inferences indicate that readers combine text ideas and world knowledge in a manner suggestive of tacit deductive reasoning. Evidence originating in numerous labs converges on a variety of principles of validation; which in turn highlight ongoing theoretical challenges in research concerning text processes.

ABSTRACT. The Center for the Study of Adult Literacy is a federally funded national research center. During this presentation, an update on the following center activities will be provided: (a) description of individual differences in reading-related abilities of 544 adults reading at the 3rd-8th grade levels, (b) description of the iterative development of an intervention tailored to the needs of the adults, and (c) description of the intervention and pilot results.

ABSTRACT. One component of the CSAL intervention is AutoTutor, a computer system on the web that has conversational agents that train adult learners comprehension strategies in 35 lessons. The comprehension strategies are grounded in theories of comprehension that guide curriculum design. We report results on adult readers that assess whether comprehension performance (accuracy and time) varies among different categories of lessons that focus on words, the textbase, the situation model, versus the rhetorical structure.

ABSTRACT. Motivation is believed to promote independent reading. In this study, we provided interest-matched expository texts that are slightly above grade level to adult learners, and we measured reading times using an e-reader app. Results indicate that participants in the highest interest-matched group read approximately twice as long as those in the lowest matched group.

ABSTRACT. We have observed meaningful person-to-person variability in self-reported motivation among a sample of 273 low literacy skill adults. This presentation will focus on individual configurations of personal motivation that are associated with positive response to an intensive reading intervention.

ABSTRACT. For a sample of 532 struggling adult readers, we explored the dimensionality of non-literal language in the context of other oral language skills. Non-literal language appeared to tap into a general oral language ability that included language comprehension and oral vocabulary skills, and predicted approximately half of the variance in reading comprehension.

ABSTRACT. When do conceptual misalignments in dialog lead to consequential miscommunication? After telephone survey interviews about tobacco use, 131 respondents’ conceptions of ordinary expressions (e.g., “smoking," “every day”) were quantified via multiple-choice questionnaire and by re-administering the survey questionnaire with standard definitions. Findings demonstrate surprisingly high levels of conceptual misalignment with researchers, but at least some unresolved misunderstandings do not matter: they do not change the communication outcome—the answers given and the resulting survey estimates.

ABSTRACT. The effectiveness of medical treatment depends on the quality of patient-clinician communication. A fundamental aspect is how patients and clinicians build a shared understanding of illness and treatment. We use the conversation analytic 'repair' framework to analyse how psychiatrists and patients produce and clarify shared understanding, whether this can be improved through training and its association with treatment outcomes.

ABSTRACT. Clarification requests (CRs) are our main means of expressing problems in everyday linguistic interaction. This talk discusses results from corpus and experimental studies of CRs concerning their sources -- the items being clarified -- in order to understand what we do (and don't) clarify. We discuss some differences in likelihood of clarification of different word types, and show that while some fit with hypotheses about familiarity and/or information content, some seem much harder to explain.

ABSTRACT. An essential property of human interaction is the ability to signal potential misunderstandings to an interlocutor and initiate conversational repair. The delay between the turn that gave rise to the misunderstanding and and the initiation of repair is influenced by both social and cognitive factors. Combining methods from Conversation Analysis and Cognitive Psychology, we studied these delays for different types of open- and closed-class repair initiator tokens, and compared them using Bayesian statistical methods.

ABSTRACT. This talk will discuss the experimental evidence for the `Running Repairs’ hypothesis: that co-ordinated language use depends primarily on the processes used to detect and deal with problems on-the-fly. We outline the chat-tool and interactive drawing paradigms for experimenting with live interaction and summarise the ways in which they have been used to experiment with repair mechanisms. We identify some limitations with these studies and outline some proposals for dealing with them.

ABSTRACT. We used regression and Bayes’ analyses to explore how ESL status and reading proficiency relate to self-report reading strategy use and use of in-the-moment text processing strategies (i.e., paraphrasing, bridging, elaboration). ESL status did not predict self-reported strategy use, bridging, or elaboration, but was associated with increased paraphrasing (in the regression analysis only). Reading proficiency was negatively associated with self-reported use of support strategies, but positively predicted the use of all in-the-moment processing strategies.

ABSTRACT. We report on two studies exploring whether refutation texts could be used to correct miconceptions about education reforms and social issues. Study I explored the use of refutation texts to overcome misconceptions about an education policy. In Study II, refutation texts were used to correct misconceptions about immigration that may impact public policy decisions. Results showed the refutation texts were effective in reducing misconceptions, an effect that persisted even even after a one week delay.

ABSTRACT. Drawing on theories of purposeful reading, the objective of this study was to examine the conditions that can support 5th graders' construction of an adequate task model. More specially, we investigate whether a better task model improves children's search for specific piece of information within a document. In an “enhanced task model” condition, results indeed demonstrated an increase of correct answers, though no shorter response times compared to a control condition.

ABSTRACT. An empirical study contrasted learning about the Earth’s carbon cycle and the greenhouse effect from plain text with no instruction or adjunct, plain text when prompted to take notes or to make drawings while reading, or illustrated texts including static images or animations. Students who were exposed to decorative images has the largest illusions of understanding, while students who generated sketches during reading gave the most conservative predictive judgments of understanding.

ABSTRACT. Three ordering principles are relevant to the clause order within complex sentences: iconicity (chronological vs. reverse order), frame structure (main clause – subordinate clause or vice versa), and information structure(given-new vs. new-given). In an eye-tracking experiment among 80 adults, we investigated the effect of these ordering principles on the reading process. No single ordering principle facilitated reading irrespective of the other two ordering principles. Rather, readers were sensitive to specific combinations of the ordering principles.

ABSTRACT. We investigated the effects of clarifying local text structures in processing and comprehending high-school textbooks using test material from the Reading Skill Test (Arai et al., 2017). Twenty-two university students read short passages with or without improvement of local text structures. The results showed distinct effects between the genres—clarifying structures facilitated performance but not the process of reading natural science passages; on the other hand, it reduced reading time and rereading for humanities texts.

ABSTRACT. Two studies explored how irrelevant numerical information in word problems harms performance, whether through numerical interference in memory or by hindering the development of a situation model. Study 1 used eye-tracking to assess what information was being attended by participants. Study 2 used a memory manipulation to enhance the salience of irrelevant numerical information. Solvers attended more to irrelevant words than numbers, and low-working memory individuals were harmed by misleading words, despite increased numerical interference.

ABSTRACT. This study examines three phonological and orthographic word reading assessments (Test of Irregular Word Reading Efficiency, and the WJ-III Letter-Word Identification and Word Attack subtests) administered to a sample of 544 native and non-native English speaking adult readers tested in the United States and Canada. Using multiple group confirmatory factor analysis, item responses were analyzed to isolate item-level measurement differences versus person-level differences due to group membership (native speaker status).

ABSTRACT. We examined the impact of topical knowledge (TK) on students’ ability to comprehend text. Students answered TK questions before they completed a comprehension assessment on the same topic. While TK was related to comprehension, words that had a higher association to the semantic network were more predictive of comprehension than a measure based on general word frequency. This trend occurred even though most of the topical words were not mentioned in the text.

ABSTRACT. We examined how different materials —comics/texts— could affect people’s reading comprehension, through eye-movements patterns. Participants read stories with two endings —coherent/incoherent— and they had to choose one, while there eye movements were recorded. There were differences between children and adults moderated by the material used. There were, also, interesting differences between coherent and incoherent endings, which lead us to think children and adults may use different strategies to reach the same levels of comprehension.

ABSTRACT. We examined how static and animated pictures affect comprehension of auditory narrative text in children aged 7, 9, and 11. Comprehension was operationalized using a sentence recognition task which takes surface, textbase, and situation model representations into account. Results show that surface and situation model representations improved when static or animated pictures were presented. However, there was no difference between static and animated pictures regarding any level of representation.

ABSTRACT. Pre-service teachers’ instructional metadiscourse in-interplay-with-discourse-proper, in 20 micro-teaching sessions, was examined across 5 disciplines (math, social studies, science, language-arts, music/PE), in epistemic-beliefs context. The analyses reveal discipline-specific patterns, e.g. holistic-organization and metalanguage in Language-Arts, performance-oriented music/PE embodied discourse. Results suggest modifying effect of praxis on metadiscursive repertoires and epistemic beliefs links. Experienced student-teacher talk showcased causal/inferencing devices and cautious stance, suggesting beliefs about importance of causality for learning and un-certain knowledge-basis/nature. Socio-pragmatic/pedagogic implications are offered.

ABSTRACT. This study assessed the extent to which language comprehension, executive function, and reading ability predicted inferencing ability for first-grade students in non-reading contexts. Inferencing was assessed during encoding (online) or after encoding (offline). Regression analyses indicate that executive function is the sole significant predictor of online inferencing performance, whereas language comprehension is the sole significant predictor of offline inferencing. These results suggest that online and offline inferencing place different cognitive and linguistic demands on students.

ABSTRACT. This study explored the extent to which students displayed collaborative problem solving (CPS) skills in an electronics online simulation-based task. We further sought to examine the relationship between the display of CPS skills and students’ performance on the task. Students’ discourse and actions demonstrated evidence of 11 CPS skills outlined in a competency model. Further, there were significant relationships among eight of the CPS skills and performance outcomes.

ABSTRACT. We investigated how bilingual adults comprehend positive and negative irony in their first language (L1). 48 English-L1 bilinguals read scenarios and made sensibility judgments to subsequently presented ironic or literal statements. There were 3 key findings: 1) bilinguals responded more slowly to ironic vs. literal statements; (2) bilinguals were more likely to recognize irony following negative vs. positive scenarios; 3) increased self-rated L2 proficiency patterned with easier and faster irony processing.

ABSTRACT. Complex learning often involves reading documents, performing learning tasks (e.g., answering deep comprehension questions), and getting different sorts of feedback, including Elaborated Feedback. Recording accurately the learners’ decisions and the ordered actions carried out by a student while learning is crucial for understanding the learning processes. Read&Learn is a research application developed as a web tool to design experiments to examine those processes. We aim to present Read&Learn, and to show its utility.

ABSTRACT. False balance occurs when opposing views are given equitable attention and coverage, despite one side having greater empirical support. We investigated whether exposure to such texts on the topic of global warming would influence perceived scientific consensus. After reading a falsely-balanced text, participants reported lower perceived scientific consensus as compared to after reading consensus-message or control texts. Our analyses suggest the inclusion of contrarian messages may drive the effects of exposure to falsely balanced discourse.

ABSTRACT. When reading science-journalistic articles about novel medical findings, laypeople’s perception of the scientific tentativeness of these findings is negatively correlated with their perception of scientific credibility. Across two experimental online studies, we showed that providing a refutation text about misconceptions of tentativeness is a promising tool to overcome this relationship and to provide laypeople with a realistic and appropriate appraisal of the tentativeness of novel scientific findings, in order to support public understanding of science.

ABSTRACT. Effects of task instructions and topic signaling on text processing were investigated. In Experiment 1, readers read two multiple-topic expository texts for a summary or sentence verification task. In Experiment 2, readers read a text with or without signaling the topic sentences. Eye-tracking was employed to study individual strategies revealed by cluster analysis. Some readers adapted their strategy to task demands, but a subset of readers employed a structure strategy regardless of task and signaling.

ABSTRACT. Inaccurate statements appearing in fictional texts can problematically influence readers’ post-reading decisions. One intriguing possibility is that this influence may depend upon similarities between characters conveying the inaccuracies and readers’ preferences. Similarities might encourage readers to endorse characters’ statements, make readers more evaluative of that content, or have little effect. Here we examined the potential influence of political identity. Inaccurate content was overall influential regardless of matches or mismatches between readers’ and characters’ political affiliations.

ABSTRACT. Although historians consider marginalia are comments placed beside a text, most psycholinguists do not differ between marginalia and headings. A learning experiment (N=76) compared marginalia introduced either as marginal headings (eg1) or comments (eg2) with identical regular headings (cg). As expected, learning outcomes showed increased inferential performance and detail recognition for marginal comments. Headings showed no advantages. Rather unexpected, gaze patterns only differed between marginalia and headings but not between marginal headings and marginal comments.

ABSTRACT. Focusing on expository discourse, the authors evaluated young adolescents’ written explanations for why they agreed or disagreed with the moral messages of four Greek fables. It was of interest to learn about individual differences in the factors of language productivity, syntactic complexity, critical thinking, and abstract reasoning. Results indicated high variability in the performance of this group of adolescents (n = 40; mean age = 13 years) on all factors.

ABSTRACT. This study addressed the effect of decorative images with affective properties (high/low in valence and arousal) in procedural multimedia comprehension. Dependent variables were mean study time, and accuracy during object assembly. High arousal images made participants study the instructions slower, and led to more errors in performance; in contrast, valence did not have an effect. In line with the seductive detail effect, we found evidence against including irrelevant, highly arousing, emotional information in instructional materials.

ABSTRACT. According to literature, highlighting demands processes of reading and learning strategies. Therefore, strong relations are expected between highlighting and strategic capabilities and reading. We investigated an adult sample (N = 937) using reading tests, strategy questionnaires, and highlighting tasks evaluated by devised indexes. These indexes provide detailed highlighting descriptions, correlate rarely with strategies, strongly with reading and account for a remarkable degree of its variance. The results are discussed in relation to technology-based reading assessment.

ABSTRACT. The current study investigates contributions of reader factors towards revising (or maintaining) beliefs about childhood vaccinations after reading an accurate text supporting childhood vaccines. The results demonstrate preexisting accurate and inaccurate beliefs stably predict their post-reading counterparts. Readers high in need for cognition were more likely to gain accurate beliefs and a backfire effect was observed such that readers high in flexible thinking were more likely to gain inaccurate beliefs and to lose accurate beliefs.

ABSTRACT. This study tested whether semantic-relatedness and directed forgetting influence proactive interference in multiple documents comprehension. Participants read two sets of 10 texts either on the same or different topics, with or without instructions between the two to forget the first set. Recognition tests measured memory for the texts. After reading semantically related texts, people less accurately distinguished target from earlier-read texts than those reading texts on different topics; intentional forgetting did not reduce memory errors.

ABSTRACT. This eye-tracking experiment examined how verbal information search processes were modified by word spacing. Participants’ gazes on words were longer when the density of words was higher, which suggests that more words were processed in a single gaze in that situation. Interestingly, participants only had to fixate half of the words to tell that the target word was absent, which shows that efficient word scanning can be achieved without gazing directly at all the words.

ABSTRACT. We examined 9th-graders comprehension processing of a long science text under two task conditions, self-explanations and question-answering, and their impact on learning. We assumed that whereas self-explanation would mainly focus students on the explicit information in the text (i.e., paraphrases), question-answering might promote going beyond the text (i.e., elaborations), which would affect the students’ learning. We partially confirm these hypotheses. Results are discussed in terms of how comprehension processes are sensitive to task conditions.

ABSTRACT. An eye-tracking study explored perspective effects on eye-movements during reading. We presented texts that included either a personal perspective (you) or an onlooker perspective (he/she). We measured whether fixations on the pronouns themselves differed as a function of perspective. It was found that early in the text, processing of you is easier than he or she. However, as the character referred to by he/she becomes more familiar, fixations on he/she decrease, specifically in negative contexts.

ABSTRACT. Two experiments test whether early effects of implicit causality in visual world eye-tracking studies can be replicated for implicit consequentiality. Earlier behavioural studies (some from our lab) had suggested only late effects of implicit causality. Our first experiment is a visual world experiment, with consequential rather than causal sentence continuations. In the second study, causal and consequential continuations are mixed, so that participants cannot be guided by the general structure of sentences in the experiment.

ABSTRACT. In two dual-task studies, we found inconsistency effects in the no-load conditions but not when the working memory was constrained with another task (remembering letters/digits). When we decreased the distance between the critical sentences (and thus ‘decreasing’ the demand on working memory), we found inconsistency effects even when the working memory was constrained. These results indicate that coherence monitoring is (at least partially) a strategic process for which working memory capacity is needed.

ABSTRACT. We combined behavioral and fMRI data to examine brain networks involved in processing and integrating information that is inconsistent with prior text or background knowledge, and how these processes are connected to subsequent memory. Results suggest that inconsistencies with text or background knowledge have differential effects on the memory representation of a text and that the dmPFC, precuneus, and left IFG seem to play distinct roles during detection and integration of text-based and knowledge-based inconsistencies.

ABSTRACT. Effects of distributed rereading depend on time of test also for school students. 191 seventh-graders reread a text either immediately or after one week. Learning outcomes were measured after 4 minutes or 1 week. With distributed rereading, participants reread the text more slowly, perceived reading as more difficult and predicted lower learning success. At the shorter retention interval, massed rereading outperformed distributed rereading whereas at the longer interval, the conditions did not differ.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated the psychological relevance of semantic similarity estimated by latent semantic analysis (LSA), the well-known computational model of semantic memory, for second language readers. Japanese university students performed similarity judgments and cued recall for paired English words and sentences. Linear mixed-effects models showed that LSA similarities of the paired items significantly predicted students' judgments and recall performance, but the effect was mediated by students' reading skills and size of text units (word/sentence).

ABSTRACT. This study examined Japanese EFL learners’ text processing during reading when given relevance instructions to focus on specific information as compared to reading for general comprehension. The reading time of the information relevant to the instructions was longer than that of irrelevant information. The result suggests that such instruction induces the learners to strategically focus their attention on the specified information. However, the relevance effect was not observed when they read a cognitively demanding text.

ABSTRACT. This study examines conceptualisations of LIGHT in Masnavi (Complete six books) using the theoretical and analytical frameworks of Cultural Linguistics (Sharifian, 2011, 2017). The study is conducted through the compilation of the corpus, identification of the metaphors, and the cultural analysis using Nvivo11 and MAXQDA. The study is concluded by listing all symbols and metaphors that are linguistic manifestations of LIGHT which are categorized into types, degrees, levels, and functions respectively.

ABSTRACT. This study builds on a previous study that found children with autism spectrum disorders' comprehension performance linearly decreased as the demand for mentalizing and social communication ability increased. The authors, however, did not measure specific text characteristics. The purpose of this study was to develop a text analysis to characterize the social characteristics of a text. Three text measures, proportion of mental/emotional state words, proportion of pronouns, and narrativity replicated the previous behavioral findings.

ABSTRACT. Sixth graders’ (426) attention and executive function (EF) difficulties rated by a teacher were evaluated in relation to their traditional reading and online research and comprehension (ORC) performance after controlling gender and nonverbal intelligence. Separate structural equation models were constructed for both reading measures. After controlling the background variables, the teacher-rated attention and EF difficulties explained 2% of the variance of traditional reading, and 12% of the ORC variance in girls and 6% in boys.

ABSTRACT. This paper seeks to answer how these policemen narrate their performance of masculine identity when they are on duty. The stories were analyzed within the framework of Narrative analysis and I will adopt Riessman’s Thematic and Structuralist approach in this paper (2008) related to Masculinity theory. The analysis indicated that those policemen’s language choices give us the reflection of their attitudes and identities in their jobs.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated the relative contribution of metacognitive awareness of reading strategy use, and reading motivation in predicting reading comprehension of English as a foreign language. The sample consisted of 207 Egyptian university students with an Arabic language background. Descriptive results indicated that students have a high awareness of reading strategies, and possess multifaceted reading motivation. Regression analysis revealed that problem-solving reading strategies, competition, compliance, and integrativeness significantly predicted English reading comprehension.

ABSTRACT. The present study examined how “why” questions presented in the beginning of a text influence expository text reading. Eye movements of college students were recorded while they read expository texts with the purpose of summarizing and answering “why” questions, inserted either in the beginning of the texts or presented after reading. The results observed suggest that elaborative interrogation, namely presenting a “why” question in the beginning of the text, improves strategic reading behavior.

ABSTRACT. This qualitative study unravels multimodal strategies in luxury propery advertising, focussing on the discursive construction of social actors, social actions and legitimations through the interplay between verbal and visual modes. It is argued that legitimations are systematically deployed to enhance the persuasive power by drawing on the symbolic values of luxury products, the rationalisation of knowledges of habitual social actions, and the narratives that target recipients of the ads who are hailed as intellectual buyers.

ABSTRACT. This paper is a study based on the causal text markers collected from the beginning, intermediate and advanced native English learners. It finds through statistical investigation that the language acquisition progress of Chinese causal text markers appears a nonlinear path by the native English learners, and the common meaning in both languages can be learned at the early stage.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to analyze the role of working memory, vocabulary, and sustained attention in the comprehension of narratives in 4- to 6-year-old children. A structural equation model was carried out and showed that vocabulary and working memory have an important direct effect on the comprehension of narratives, while the effect of the children’s age was mediated by their working memory capacity. Sustained attention showed no significant effect on comprehension.

ABSTRACT. In the present study, the performance of undergraduate students and adults with intellectual disability is compared in a standardized comprehension task (ECOMPLEC.Sec narrative text). Huge differences are observed in their performance, but a considerable overlapping can be observed when both groups performance is compared. These results are showing that there are great differences between them, although some adults with intellectual disability can equal undergraduate sample performance when they have enough time to answer the task.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of the cognitive strategies in writing and the story-map reading instructions on disadvantaged students’ narrative writing performance. Half the classes received the integrated instruction while the rest received the instructions focused on the reading comprehension. Results indicated that when the writing performances of the two experimental groups were assessed using a rating scale, there were no statistically significant differences between them.

ABSTRACT. This lecture discusses the rhetorical strategies of the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) and the politician and Israeli parliament member, Ahmed Tibi, with regard to Holocaust remembrance. The article compares the rhetorical strategies which these writers use to express a message linked to the Holocaust.

ABSTRACT. This study examined embodied cognition effects on language comprehension in the elderly. Four age groups read short narratives that implicitly conveyed details indicated that an object can be heavy or light to carry. Reading times of a target sentence indicated that younger and older participants (except very old readers) are sensitive to the object's weight during reading and after reading the whole text (sentence-picture compatibility task).