ABSTRACT. The study analyzes the predictive role of Theory of Mind (ToM) to the comprehension of multiple texts on two topics in 4th and 5th graders. Topic of the texts and other relevant individual skills were considered as control. Participants were 184 children attending 3 schools. Multiple-text comprehension and ToM were assessed using short essays and mental state explanations for stories. Mixed models showed that ToM uniquely predicts multiple-text comprehension over and above control variables.

ABSTRACT. We studied multimodal evaluation in the context of a multiple document task in which 207 primary school students (grades 4-6) read texts and watch videos from web pages that provided conflicting views about bottled and tap water. Students’ grade and reading skills positively predicted students’ multiple documents comprehension as reflected in three different tasks: source memory, source to content links and a summary task. Prior knowledge, topic interest and prior attitude played a minor role.

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to investigate psychophysiological responses while reading multiple webpages on a debated topic. We measured heart rate (HR) as an index of emotional arousal and heart rate variability (HRV) as an index of emotional regulation. Forty-seven students in grade 7 read four webpages varying for reliability and position on the topic, while their cardiac activity was registered. Results showed that HR was a negative predictor and HRV a positive predictor of multiple-text comprehension.

ABSTRACT. Upper-secondary school students were asked to select the texts they wanted to use in order to write a letter to the editor about a socio-scientific topic. Afterwards, they were asked to justify their text selections, read the selected texts, and write their letters to the editor. Across two topics, students’ behavioral engagement in the selection, justification, reading, and writing tasks contributed to their performance over and above their reading comprehension, topic knowledge, and topic interest.

ABSTRACT. Readers often come across multiple texts on controversial issues presenting opposing claims supported by different types of argument. This study examined the extent to which claims (in favor vs. against) and argument types (scientific evidence-based vs. personal case-based) influence single- and multiple-text comprehension. Argument type was found to influence single-text comprehension regardless of prior beliefs, and the comprehension of one text in the set predicted across-text integration regardless of prior beliefs or working memory capacity.

ABSTRACT. Processing studies suggest that when readers encounter an implicit causality (IC) verb, they quickly generate predictions about the upcoming discourse. In off-line studies, we found that restrictive relative clauses (RCs) can satisfy IC biases if a causal relation can be inferred between the RC and its matrix clause. In this eyetracking-while-reading experiment, we examine how fast language users update that discourse-level expectations have been met by an RC and how fast this updating takes place.

ABSTRACT. The current study attempted to differentiate readers using latent profile analysis (LPA). We found that readers could be distinguished by their basic reading proficiencies as well as by the inferences they generated during a think-aloud task. We identified four groups that were differentiated on these dimensions. Furthermore, group membership predicted performance on an academic reading task, suggesting these distinctions are meaningful. Results will be discussed in the context of utility for reading interventions.

ABSTRACT. Older adults read faster and “riskier” than younger adults. Here, we investigated whether this also affects their pronoun resolution. In Experiment 1, young and old adults read sentences comprising a pronoun which did or did not refer to an antecedent. In Experiment 2, they read sentences in which a gender cue was or was not available. Results show that older adults process pronoun information similarly online but depend on explicit resolution cues in offline comprehension.

ABSTRACT. How does the videomediated “self-view” alter interactional dynamics? 133 laboratory respondents answered questions from ongoing US national surveys either with or without a self-view while their gaze was tracked. Self-view respondents looked more at the interviewer during questions about sensitive topics, and they averted their gaze more when giving socially undesirable answers. Respondents who looked more at the self-view window reported greater comfort and less self-consciousness, demonstrating that self-view in videomediated interaction can promote disclosure.

ABSTRACT. The ability to evaluate the plausibility of scientific arguments is important for comprehending scientific texts. This study used eye tracking to examine the cognitive processes underlying the successful evaluation of arguments of varying plausibility. Sixty university students read expository texts with short scientific arguments and provided plausibility judgments. Results showed that implausible arguments elicited more elaborative processing (longer first-/second-pass reading times and more regressions) but only if these arguments were correctly identified as implausible.

ABSTRACT. The persuasive potential of narratives is often attributed to their ability to induce transportation, which is assumed to entail rich imagery and a loss of access to the real world. In two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that narratives with more sensory detail induce higher transportation and persuasion, and that transportation into a narrative as compared to an expository text results in slower access to real-world knowledge. Neither hypothesis was supported by the results.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how reading fictional texts might impact readers’ theory of mind. Participants read either a “literary” story or a “pop fiction” story, then completed the RMET task, a measure of Theory of Mind. The literary text yielded higher RMET scores, but the impact was higher for people who had less exposure to fiction. The literary text also required more emotional inferences, and this difference in “emotional cohesion” might explain differences in RMET scores.

ABSTRACT. Researchers know little about whether learners’ early understanding of textual functions of perfective and imperfective aspect (“Dad replaced/was replacing the board”), as well as later understanding of semantic concepts behind textual functions, can be influenced through an explicit teaching intervention. German teacher candidates were studied before and after being taught about semantic differences and causal inferences based on these aspects within stories. Different angles on the apparent promotion of interlanguage comprehension of aspect are discussed.

ABSTRACT. In this paper, we aim to chart what different types of narratives and narrative elements are used in Dutch primary school educational materials. We identify what elements define a prototypical narrative and assess to what extent such elements are used in educational materials by means of a qualitative corpus analysis. Our analysis shows the inclusion of a broad spectrum of phenomena, ranging from full-blown narratives to narrative-like fragments that lack some of these prototypical elements.

ABSTRACT. We investigated the effect of auditory noise on memory for temporal order in narratives. The results indicated that noise decreased subjects’ ratings of whether they were on task, and that lower on-task ratings were associated with weaker temporal-order memory. However, noise by itself had little direct effect on temporal-order judgements. The pattern of results was explained in terms of a distinction between processing effort and productivity.

ABSTRACT. Research in comprehension has made important contributions toward documenting the strategies and cognitive processes associated with successful comprehension.  However, comprehension models do not often account for how learning in real-world settings is often multifaceted and charged with emotion.  For example, reader emotions can influence attention and strategy use, text content can elicit emotions, and contexts can induce particular feelings.  Despite its importance, studies of how reader emotions influence comprehension often yield conflicting findings due to inconsistencies in the specific process, emotion, and task under investigation.  The PET (Process, Emotions, and Tasks) framework considers how reader emotions differentially influence comprehension as a function of the specific comprehension process, type of emotion, and task features.  For example, emotions influence resonance via congruency and constraints on spread of activation.  When considering integration and inferences, positive emotions provide facilitation, but only for assimilative tasks.  In contrast, negative emotions provide facilitation for tasks requiring local processing and accommodation.  The influence of induced emotion on top-down processes, such as the instantiation of reading goals, may be mediated by control-value appraisals.  Finally, important interactions arise through text, reader, and activity variables.  Therefore, the particular comprehension process, the specific emotion, and varying task features lead to different predictions regarding the effects of emotion on comprehension processes and products. The PET framework can help organize and guide research and clarify understandings regarding how to holistically support learners.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study was to examine if the gender connotation of text contents explain gender differences in reading. With data from the German National Educational Panel Study, we examined the impact of gender-stereotyped text contents on the reading competence of women and men. Preliminary results confirmed that men had a higher reading competence than women in male-stereotyped texts contents, whereas there was no gender difference in female-stereotyped text contents.

ABSTRACT. We explored individual differences in processing patterns of low performing readers solving reading tasks in a digital environment. Using data from PISA 2012, task processing of less-skilled readers was investigated in a digital reading unit by means of a hierarchical cluster analysis of variables derived from log data. The results suggest three clusters: low performing readers who (1) acted overconfidently, (2) showed low engagement in task processing, or (3) endeavored in task processing.

ABSTRACT. We identified functional illiterate young adults within three large scale assessments (PIAAC, NEPS, and the Level One Study). The comparison showed that despite different assessments of literacy in these three studies there was a comparable pattern of results in that young adults with low achievement in literacy were not able to deal with certain task demands. Moreover, the results showed that the sociodemographic profiles of functional illiterates were comparable between the studies.

ABSTRACT. Different types of feedback messages are used to guide students in learning, one of the most effective type of feedback messages are those with elaborated information. How we process these messages may depend on other factors such as prior background knowledge which is considered an important factor in comprehension. In this work we put together the results of three recent investigations to test if students’ prior background knowledge affects how students process elaborative feedback messages.

ABSTRACT. How accurately do people interpret each other's ironic intent? Using actual posts from an online forum, this study asked authors of the posts, members of the forum, members of other forums, and people who weren’t members of any forum to rate authors’ intended humor and sarcasm. Although forum members aligned more with the authors than outsiders, alignment was surprisingly low. Results raise questions about how current theories of ironic discourse apply to real-world irony usage.

ABSTRACT. We examined repetition effects using idioms. Participants read passages containing an idiom (walk in the park) twice in succession. For the second reading, the passage contexts were either repeated (Passage A, Passage A) or changed to an unrelated new passage (Passage A, Passage B). Furthermore, the idioms were repeated (walk in the park) or changed to synonym idioms (piece of cake). Results showed repetition effects for repeated and synonym idioms, but only within repeated passages.

ABSTRACT. Participants read poems that had predictable rhyming patterns and responded to recognition probes that measured activation of backgrounded concepts. In Experiment 1 we found evidence for resonance effects driven by overlapping rhymes, using undergraduates as participants. Experiment 2 investigated whether expertise with rhyme might lead to increased accessibility of backgrounded concepts through anticipation of predictable sounds. Differences between more- and less-experienced rhymers were found.

ABSTRACT. Four eye-tracking studies examined how readers resolve the meaning of irony, whether processing of irony differs from the processing of metaphors, and are individual differences in working memory capacity (WMC) and processing emotions related to the processing of irony. The results show that ironic utterances are reread more in comparison to literal utterances, and metaphors; and individual differences in WMC and ability to process emotions affect the time-course of resolving irony.

ABSTRACT. Virtual internships are online simulations where students experience professional practices. During these internships, students report their work in digital notebooks, which are assessed by human raters. Prior work used classifiers trained on participant data to assess notebooks. However, when educators create new virtual internships, no participant data is available. Here, we report on a LSA-based method for assessment classifiers without student data. Furthermore, we found the optimum corpus size and vector dimensionality for the classifiers.

ABSTRACT. Reading is a complex cognitive process through which learners acquire new information and consolidate their knowledge. Readers create a mental representation for a given text by identifying relevant words that, alongside prior inferred concepts, become activated and are used to establish meaningful associations. Our comprehension model uses an automated approach for simulating the way learners read and conceptualize by considering both text-based information consisting of syntactic dependencies, as well as inferred concepts from semantic models.

ABSTRACT. This meta-analysis synthesizes results from 43 studies on informative and narrative text-structure interventions. A small to moderate overall effect was found on students’ text comprehension (g=0.27), with direct effects being larger than maintenance effects. Effect sizes varied largely across outcome measures (e.g. comprehension questions, free recall). Several content-related and pedagogical characteristics moderated the effects. For instance, paragraph-structure instruction strengthened summarization skills, and interventions including teacher modeling and/or individual activities were associated with increased maintenance effects.

ABSTRACT. We examined language and cognitive correlates and their structural relations to discourse comprehension in oral language context (i.e., listening comprehension), using meta-analytic structural equation modeling. Results from 75 studies (N = 36,758) revealed that higher-order cognitive skills (i.e., inference and perspective-taking) had direct relations to listening comprehension whereas vocabulary, working memory, and inhibitory control had indirect relations to listening comprehension via higher-order cognitive skills. Grammatical knowledge was directly and indirectly related to listening comprehension.

ABSTRACT. Text comprehension research has resulted in theoretical proposals and thorough experimental work on presumably distinguishable subprocesses, such as lexical access, syntactic parsing, semantic integration, inference, goal structure, or situation model. With the increased availability of neuroscientific methodologies, in particular neuroimaging, there is now a considerable body of empirical results on the functional neuroanatomy of these processes. However, the mapping of particular brain regions to text comprehension processes has not been very consistent. On the other hand, neuroscientific researchers have introduced a variety of new concepts (e.g. protagonist monitoring, unification, accumulation, narrativization) to explain some unexpected results, and to reflect the fact that many brain functions turn out to be less specific than traditional cognitive theories have postulated. In this talk I will give an overview of the most important theories and findings, evaluate the need for modification of text comprehension theories, and sketch possible bridges between the two communities.

ABSTRACT. Many children struggle with reading comprehension. Such difficulties can impair the ability of these children to succeed in school. The proposed research examines the effects of a causal questioning intervention provided via a computerized program on the reading comprehension of middle school students.

ABSTRACT. Preschool language and literacy assessments help educators identify at-risk students who need intervention. The present study focuses on growth patterns of children with disabilities on five early language and literacy measures. Using the Individual Growth and Development Indicators (IGDIs), we will analyze the seasonal growth of 291 children with and without disabilities to investigate how the IGDIs detect growth for all students, and their utility for assessing students with disabilities.

ABSTRACT. We examine non-students’ use of information acquired from the web in their discussions and posts online. We found believability and corroboration both increased frequency of use but people still used things they did not believe the truth of and used information that they could not recall where they learned it.

ABSTRACT. This study tested the assumption that readers perceive themselves to be more competent and experience more intrinsic motivation when reading comprehensible texts. 105 university students randomly received a well- or a badly-phrased text that was identical in content. After reading they completed a comprehensibility questionnaire and a German version of the intrinsic motivation inventory. As expected results showed statistically significant effects of comprehensibility on perceived competence (d = 0.58) and intrinsic motivation (d = 0.85).

ABSTRACT. In an ERP reading experiment, we tested whether the default mechanism at sentence beginnings is shifting to a new mental structure or mapping onto an existing one. Indefinite and definite articles were used as cues to shift and map. ERPs were recorded on repeated or non-repeated critical nouns following these articles. More- and less-skilled comprehenders were sensitive repetition effects reflecting lexical access, but only more-skilled comprehenders showed evidence of using article cues for structure building.

ABSTRACT. The goal of this study was to investigate the relation between text comprehension and the ability to understand referential nominal metaphors in children (8- to 10-year-olds). The first experiment established text comprehension as a powerful predictor of the ability to identify the referent of nouns used metaphorically. The second experiment showed that two types of inferential processing, text-based inference and knowledge-based inference, made complementary contribution to the prediction of nominal metaphor understanding.

ABSTRACT. Previous research has argued that omitting a conclusion from a message has greater persuasion power than stating it explicitly when motivate readers infer the conclusions. This paper examined the theory of omitting conclusions with a focus on the texts used in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) communication, where the messages are posted electronically on the Web in an anonymous way. A negative effect of omitting conclusions was confirmed through an online survey distributed on Amazon Mechanical Turk.

ABSTRACT. The intensity of emotions evoked by language is typically seen to depend on whether one is using their first or second language, although some studies have failed to find any differences. We investigated a related but unexplored topic of how engaged people become with a narrative text. Based on a variety of statistical techniques, we found no evidence that engaging with text in one’s second language had any impact on narrative engagement.

ABSTRACT. The current study examined adolescents’ engagement in text-based explanatory modeling under two conditions of support: graphic organizer present or absent. Concurrent think alouds were used to uncover processing. The presence of the graphic organizer led to more complete models, better learning, and more productive forms of processing, particularly elaborative processing of relevant information, than its absence. The effects of the graphic organizer on models and learning were mediated by these productive forms of processing.

ABSTRACT. Inferencing is a foundational skill of language comprehension that is necessary to foster comprehension growth in students who struggle. Students ability to improve upon their inferencing skills through a technology intervention within a non-reading context was measured. The relation between intervention effectiveness and duration is investigated in online (during text) and offline (after text) inference questioning conditions. Preliminary results show promising response to intervention across conditions for students identified as struggling comprehenders.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated the role of anxiety in the performance of reading fluency and comprehension measures. Participants completed measures of state and trait anxiety and three reading fluency and comprehension assessments. Participants high in state anxiety performed poorly within a test when items became rapidly more complex, whereas participants high in trait anxiety had poorer overall performance on the other two comprehension/fluency measures and were more likely to be categorized as having significant reading delay.

ABSTRACT. The author compares coherence relations use in Chilean Primary School Textbooks (PST) of four subject matters. A corpus of 1,882 texts, classified as those genres used to communicate knowledge in PSTs of Science, Language, Mathematics and History was manually analyzed. Results reveal that, although there are coherence relations used with similar frequency across the four subject matters (Conjunction), others are used exclusively (Condition-Instruction). Furthermore, five new categories were identified, which are prototypical of pedagogic discourse.

ABSTRACT. The present study examines the effects of readers’ induced emotions on online and offline knowledge revision about vaccination misconceptions. Before reading refutation and non-refutation texts, a mood-induction paradigm was used to induce positive, negative or neutral (control) emotional states. The findings showed that negative emotions more than positive emotions resulted in knowledge revision as indicated by greater ease of integration of the correct target sentence and post-test comprehension scores.

ABSTRACT. Children and adults from Poland and Canada were presented with sarcastic criticisms and literal criticisms in three parties present conditions: private evaluation, public evaluation, and gossip. Participants rated speaker attitude and humor. All participants rated public sarcastic criticisms as more mean than private sarcastic criticisms. Only Polish adults rated public sarcastic criticisms as less serious than private sarcastic criticisms. Culture influences how people consider the relevance of parties present as a cue when interpreting sarcasm.

ABSTRACT. We examined the variability of questioning and its effectiveness during guided reading in a large corpus of teacher-child guided reading interactions. Children (N = 115) were aged from 6 to 11 years from school districts serving different socio-economic status (SES). Teachers in low SES school regions asked more wh-word questions than teachers in high SES school regions. As predicted, wh-word questions resulted in longer responses than confirmative questions.

ABSTRACT. Constructing explanations has been shown to be an effective technique for learning from expository texts, however it is important to consider the differential benefits for specific types of learning as represented by performance on memory and inference questions. The current studies showed the benefits of explanation are specific to inference performance. Additionally, increasing the levels of constructive processing that readers are prompted to engage in showed benefits on inference performance, but no effect on memory.

ABSTRACT. The aim of this study is to analyze the effectiveness of a training and whether children responded differently to a classroom based intervention targeting the components of Listening comprehension in function of their existing level of vocabulary knowledge, as suggested by literature (Whiteley, et al., 2007). Children with low-vocabulary made lower gains in all the probes if compared to children with high-vocabulary: poor vocabulary level may place serious limits on early literacy development.

ABSTRACT. We examined the impact of knowledge monitoring (KM) on students’ learning from text sources. Students answered topical knowledge (TK) questions before they completed a comprehension assessment on the same topic. For each TK item, student groups who answered that they did not know the answer scored higher at posttest on those items, than the group who answered incorrectly at pretest. Evidence also supported that some students were better at KM than others more generally.

ABSTRACT. The goal of the study was to investigate whether information memory access impacts sentence validation with less-skilled readers teenagers. Richter and al. (2009) interference paradigm was adapted and across two experiments, the interference delay was manipulated. The results indicated that validation efficiency depends on how quickly readers access to information in memory: when interference was delayed, interference effects were observed with poor comprehenders; when it was shorten, only skilled-readers were disturbed by the interference.

ABSTRACT. This study examined how reading media may affect information retention, with a focus on the role of text genre and reading habit. Results showed no significant differences in participants’ recall of information between reading on screen and on paper, either with biographies or with expository texts. However, participants often reading on screen tended to outperform those prone to reading on paper, but this difference was only significant with biographies rather than expository texts.

ABSTRACT. Instructional influences on language production were investigated among 460 fifth-grade African American or Latino/a children. Participants were individually interviewed on a controversial policy issue after receiving a socio-scientific unit via collaborative group work or direct instruction. Analysis of interview transcripts indicated longer talk and greater syntactic complexity in the argumentative talk produced by students who had participated in collaborative groups. Results were attributed to increases in quantity and quality of talk during collaborative group work.

ABSTRACT. This study explored the nature of college students’ epistemic and non-epistemic beliefs. Students in the U.S. and in China participated in this study, where they completed a questionnaire that gauged their beliefs and knowledge about a socioscientific issue. While the two groups differed in non-epistemic beliefs, there was no significant difference between their epistemic beliefs. More importantly, the predictive power of non-epistemic beliefs and demographic factors for epistemic beliefs was different between the two groups.

ABSTRACT. When people read journalistic articles about medical issues, they often read a single long document with different controversial points of view on the topic. On this basis, we designed a before-after experiment to explore whether reading controversial versus consistent information about vaccines modified laypeople's initial behavioral intentions and how deeply text information is processed. Results indicated that comprehension was better in the controversial information group compared to both consistent information groups (for versus against vaccines).

ABSTRACT. This study investigated factors that may influence the use of complex syntax during conversational versus narrative speaking in adolescents and adults. Adolescents lagged behind adults in the use of all types of subordinate clauses during a conversational task but performed as well as adults during a narrative task. Differences in background knowledge and experience may influence the degree to which younger and older speakers tap into their syntactic competence.

ABSTRACT. The role of social interaction in cultural transmission is unclear. This study investigated the intergenerational transmission of a complex manual skill (basket weaving). It explored the possible benefits of social interaction combined with emulation (reverse engineering) over emulation only. Social interaction did not significantly improve task performance, but participants told stories during transmission to pass on information about non-routine events and vicarious memories. Storytelling may be a specialised mechanism for face-to-face cultural transmission.

ABSTRACT. This experiment extended research relating linguistic interference management to second-language (L2) reading. Using a bilingual Stroop task and a battery of non-linguistic-selective-attention and working-memory tasks, we found that cross-linguistic interference (CLI) was correlated with online semantic selection in L2, and was moderately correlated with offline L2 comprehension. Although selective attention and working memory were significantly correlated with CLI, partial correlations revealed that these factors did not mediate the relation between CLI and L2 reading.

ABSTRACT. The current experiment investigated the effects of task demands and seductive details on readers recall of and emotional response to seductive and non-seductive scientific texts. In the current experiment, 106 participants read and recalled a seductive and non-seductive science text on related topics and completed the Epistemically-Related Emotion Scale during one reading phase and one recall phase. Participants recalled less important content from seductive texts, and emotion ratings significantly differed for reading and recall phases.