ABSTRACT. Language is power. Language is access. What happens when the language of your community impedes your access… to education … to literacy … to employment? The disparities created by language differences have a significant impact on both children and adults whose community language does not adhere to the mainstream standard. For African American children longstanding disparities in the development of reading skills have been linked to the use of nonmainstream dialects, which negatively impact access to educational content. For adults the inability to code switch from the community standard to the mainstream standard impacts employment and opportunity. This talk will address the power of language to impact lives both positively and negatively among minority language and dialect users.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the relationship between coherence and elaborations in the context of the MOCCA-College reading assessment. Data from validation testing of an assessment are employed to understand whether coherence of narrative and expository elaborations predicts overall item discrimination of MOCCA-College test items. Regression analyses indicated that greater coherence of elaborations in expository and narrative, texts is negatively associated with item discrimination. The results contribute to the field’s understanding of readers’ elaborative inferences.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study is to examine what lexical properties of foundational skills test items reveal about text processing in adolescents and adults. In the US, significant proportions of both populations fail to achieve comprehension proficiency sufficient to succeed in higher education contexts. In this study, we take a deep dive into the surface code linguistic knowledge and processing of adolescents and adults who have struggled to achieve reading comprehension proficiency.

ABSTRACT. We examined when gender-related differences in sourcing emerge and which variables explain these differences. During reading, women engaged in less spontaneous sourcing than men. These differences were partially reduced when participants were prompted to evaluate sources while reading, and disappeared when they were instructed to evaluate document trustworthiness after reading. The effect of gender on spontaneous sourcing was mediated by topic self-relevance and separate knowing. This suggests that the locus of these differences is dispositional.

ABSTRACT. We studied connective comprehension from two perspectives, to investigate whether comprehenders acquire the meaning and intended usage of connectives to a similar degree. A coherence judgment study showed that differences in how well people comprehend connectives are dependent on the connectives' perceived difficulty and written frequency. Further, individual variation between participants can be explained by participants' vocabulary size and non-verbal IQ, but not their print exposure and cognitive processing style.

ABSTRACT. Adult literacy learners are characterized by their diversity, both in terms of educational histories and cognitive skillsets. We examined difference score data from a component reading skills assessment battery bookending an adult literacy intervention including an adult literacy-focused intelligent tutoring system. By clustering learners based on their performance characteristics during intervention, we were able to observe whether gains were made in foundational reading skills, revealing for whom this intervention might be most (or least) effective.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research was to analyze oral communication patterns between patients with varying degrees of individual health literacy (how patients access, understand and use health information) and their health providers. Results indicated that patients with lower health literacy levels were asked more closed-ended biomedical and lifestyle/psychosocial questions than those with higher literacy levels. Implications for discourse in the medical setting, adult classroom, and community organizations will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. Children who have multiple chronic conditions require technology which enables them to live at home; their management is intensive and specialized. The ‘Creating Opportunities for Personal Empowerment: Symptom and Technology Management Resources’ (COPE-STAR) intervention was developed as health-literate, video and web-based modules for caregivers. Discussion will center around the use of the Newest Vital Sign and expert review to assess intervention content and delivery in areas of usefulness, ease of use, and acceptability.

ABSTRACT. Health care providers ask patients if they understand diagnosis or discharge instructions; patients often simply say yes. Teach-Back (TB) is a patient-centered communication technique that allows confirmation of patient understanding. TB skills training can improve health-literate physician communication. Medical resident use of TB was discordantly low at 2.5% of clinic visits. Results indicated that a one-hour skills training intervention dramatically increased their TB use to 53% of clinic visits.

ABSTRACT. Literacy is a central barrier to healthcare. The language of healthcare is particularly complex for refugees who have limited English proficiency. Nursing students were trained in culturally competent and health literate communication techniques prior to doing practicum work in community clinics. Beliefs and knowledge were tested at the beginning and end of the semester to determine changes; results indicate a significant increase in both beliefs and knowledge.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research was to examine the extent to which health and healthcare organizations’ YouTube videos about COVID-19 vaccines used health literacy guidelines for enhancing understandability, actionability and quality of video messages and features. Results indicated few organizations applied all guidelines to video designs using health literacy criteria leaving room for improvement. Implications for inclusion of health literacy best practices for individuals at different health literacy levels will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated the relationship between university students' ability to comprehend multiple documents, measured through an argumentative essay task, and their ToM. The participants were 84 undergraduates. We assessed their ToM skill and their Mental State Talk (using a think-aloud protocol during the reading -MSTR- and through the content of their essays-MSTW). The relation between ToM and MSTW was mediated through MSTR. ToM and MSTR-W were associated with the quality of the essays.

ABSTRACT. We explored how effective undergraduates were at engaging in research report critique, and the extent to which this was associated with comprehension and integration performance. Eighty-one university students completed individual difference measures, read and critique two brief research reports, answered comprehension questions and completed a written response. Students’ most commonly generated research-methods based critiques. Comprehension performance predicted the number of valid critiques generated. Integration performance and critique generation were significantly associated.

ABSTRACT. For multiple document comprehension, where readers must encode and integrate information both within and across different sources, it would be expected that WMC should predict comprehension. The present study examined the relationship between WMC and comprehension using two reading comprehension question sets from the ACT. It was found that only performance on inference questions was uniquely related to WMC while no such relationship was found for either multi-text or textbase questions.

ABSTRACT. The present study tested the efficacy of an intervention on thinking dispositions on multiple-text comprehension performance. The participants in the study were 75 undergraduate students. The experimental group students were specifically instructed on the definition and functioning of thinking dispositions. Overall, the thinking disposition intervention was effective in promoting a higher engagement with the task and a higher level of argumentative quality.

ABSTRACT. This study examined intertextual integration skills among language arts teachers. Teachers read four texts, presenting contrasting and complementary perspectives, to address a scientific inquiry question. The essays were coded for argumentation quality, intertextual linking, and source citations. The results indicated that many teachers used intertextual links to connect between text ideas but did not employ any argument elements. Only a minority of the teachers transformed the contents using argument structures to address the inquiry question.