ABSTRACT. Inference making is a central process and unique predictor of reading comprehension. The Minnesota Inference Assessment (MIA) utilizes online questioning in a non-reading context to evaluate inference processes for K-2 students. MIA was investigated for diagnostic consistency to identify language comprehension difficulties in Kindergarten students. A ROC Analysis indicated that the current form of MIA does not meet diagnostic consistency criteria, and future research should focus on increasing the specificity of MIA.

ABSTRACT. We explored how children’s oral reading changed when reading a book on an electronic shared book reading platform. Eighty-six children (M=9.7 years, SD=.8) took turns with a pre-recorded narrator reading aloud a book, producing 7,039 oral reading responses, automatically scored for fluency. Mixed-effects models, used to separate text from person effects, showed children on average gained about 3 word-per-minute after reading each 10,000 words of book content, a growth rate far exceeding developmental norms.

ABSTRACT. Cloze tests, widely used by reading and ELL researchers and practitioners, offer a logistically efficient option of measuring one’s place in the semantic space of a passage’s topic. In this session, we will present findings from a 2-month-long problem-based learning project that lend support to this claim and share plans for exploring the cloze test’s potential in measuring students’ gains in interdisciplinary semantic spaces of course modules built through a collaborative process between disciplinary experts.

ABSTRACT. This study developed a new assessment tool of reading strategy. The assessment developed in this study, the reliability coefficients of the Grade 3 students for the 4 subtests ranged from .802 to .605; that of the Grade 5 students ranged from .801 to .606 and the validity analysis yielded correlation coefficients of .665 to .382 for the Grade 3 students; that of the Grade 5 students fell between .694 and .430.

ABSTRACT. This study uses PIAAC process data to examine time-related engagement patterns of low-skilled adults on a digital literacy assessment relative to higher-skilled adults. Preliminary results suggest that low-skilled adults (Level 2) exhibit similar time allocation patterns as higher-skilled adults (Levels 3-5). The lowest-skilled adults (at or below Level 1) spend significantly less time than other groups, with the exception of earlier presented items. Findings have implications for improving digital test-taking strategies in adult education programs.

ABSTRACT. The current study investigates whether alternative signals of list relation (words "plusieurs" or "différent") influence teenagers' inference generation of upcoming discourse relations and whether this inference is further modulated by the presence of additive and consequence connectives. The results showed that teenagers were sensitive to alternative signals, as they provided more list continuations after them. However, generation of list inference was not reinforced by the presence of connectives.

ABSTRACT. We ask whether non-face emoji, which do not explicitly represent human emotion, can impact text valence. Participants rated neutral texts paired with positive, negative, and neutral non-face emoji, as well as with no emoji, on a scale of 1 (Very Negative) to 5 (Very Positive). Positive-emoji texts were rated highest, followed by neutral-emoji texts, no-emoji texts, and lastly, negative-emoji texts. Thus, texters use subtle cues to convey emotion in an environment lacking many nonverbal cues.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how self-repairs with the editing term "well" are stance acts based on the speaker’s self-monitoring. In the framework of stance and dialogic syntax (Du Bois 2007, 2014), and speech monitoring and repair (Levelt 1983), it demonstrates that "well"-prefaced self-repair involves a shift of subjective evaluation to signal the meta-stance relation in the repair of facts, factual relations, or order. It highlights the dialogic nature of the monologic, self-initiated self-repair.

ABSTRACT. Understanding how users perceive the interior spaces is a growing interest in Interior Design discipline. Using virtual reality (VR) and think-aloud protocol helps capture the thought processes underlying user perception of the interior design spaces. Participants will experience interior design spaces in VR headsets while speaking aloud their thoughts then complete a follow-up questionnaire to elaborate on their perceptions. Analysis results will inform interior designers to optimize the spaces for positive user perception.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the role of the causal connectivity of the statements, note-taking condition and modality of presentation in the comprehension of an interview about Comprehensive Sex Education. We asked a group of Argentine college students to listen to or read the interview, perform a digital note-taking task, and to answer three comprehension questions. Results indicated a role for causal connectivity, note-taking and modality of presentation, and an interaction between causal connectivity and note-taking.

ABSTRACT. It is often assumed that dialogue is more repetitive than monologue. However, evidence from a corpus analysis suggests that people repeat themselves more in monologue than dialogue. We extend these findings with a direct comparison of self-repetition across sentences in spoken dialogue and monologue on three measures of language use: words, syntax and semantics. The results show that on all three measures people repeat themselves more in monologue than dialogue.

ABSTRACT. People coordinate to perform joint tasks in daily interactions, and successful outcomes often involve individuals performing synchronized and complementary behaviors. Using computational methods, we develop a simple linear model to describe dynamics of synchrony and complementarity and explore their task-dependence, with task context consisting of active, inactive, and inhibitory states of communication. Results reflect consistency of simulated task constraints and behavioral patterns, and draw theoretical implications towards the larger proposal of synergistic self-organization.

ABSTRACT. This study examined how discourse context influenced the cohesion of spoken conversations. Participants (n=108) engaged in a 10-minute Zoom conversation with the goal of either describing their partner or evaluating them. We found that cohesion was generally higher for the evaluation compared to describe condition. These findings provide preliminary information about how speakers engage in coherence-building in videoconferencing contexts and how these processes may vary based on the goals of the conversation.

ABSTRACT. Contemporary theories of online text comprehension should characterize unique and interactive relationships between individual reader characteristics, and evaluation and comprehension of different sources’ perspectives within texts on the internet. The primary goal of this paper is to characterize how gradations of Intellectual Humility (IH) and Implicit Bias (IB) might encourage (or discourage) someone to engage with online sources, with greater endorsement of IH and lower IB may promote a more comprehensive understanding of opposing viewpoints.

ABSTRACT. Online shared workspaces provide real-time access to others’ work as it's being written. Given that typing patterns have been shown to indicate one’s stress level and cognitive load, access to typing dynamics could inform collaborator’s perceptions of each other’s contributions. Participants completed an editing task with a “partner” whose edits were pre-recorded to be delivered fluently or disfluently. Participants then rated these edited sentences. Our results show that typing dynamics influence perception of writing quality.

ABSTRACT. Numerous studies have demonstrated a positive relationship between print exposure and text comprehension, whereas the relationship between digital text exposure and text comprehension is more uncertain. In the current study, I investigated the relationships between students’ leisure time reading, their format preferences for academic texts, and text comprehension. Results showed that participants’ preference for digital academic texts predicted text comprehension negatively, whereas leisure time print exposure predicted text comprehension positively.

ABSTRACT. We investigated if a participant’s task-unrelated thought (TUT) state can be detected using their partner’s keystroke patterns during a computer-mediated conversation. Periodic thought probes were used to sample participant’s TUT during the task and their keystrokes were recorded. Eight features were extracted from the keystrokes and were used as predictors of TUT in mixed effects models. Results show a significant link between three of the keystroke features and partner TUT.

ABSTRACT. This pilot study analyzes the reading patterns of 15 German students while receiving instant messages through a smartphone, imitating an online conversation. With this pilot study, we aim to test the eye-tracking methodology employed, in which we analyze specifically the moment in which participants return to the reading after answering the instant messages. We explore the relationships with reading comprehension performance and differences across readers.

ABSTRACT. Readers engage in multiple cognitive processes to extract visual information from graphic narratives. However, it is less clear if readers of graphic narratives engage in facial processing, prompting the generation of emotional inferences from characters’ facial expressions. In this study, a binary logistic regression will test the influence of panel framing (i.e., shot type) and composition (i.e., character, object, scene) on readers’ generation of emotional inferences during a think-aloud task and inform graphic comprehension processing.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the effect of different types of information (image only, short label, descriptive text, and interpretive text) on viewing times and responses to abstract expressionist and conceptual artworks, including aesthetic and epistemic emotions, judgments of understanding, and artistic value. Interpretive texts had positive effects on appraised ability to understand, epistemic emotions, and artistic value judgements, while descriptive texts affected aesthetic emotions. Overall, results suggest nuance for the “elaboration effect” in visual art.

ABSTRACT. According to construal level theory, people can represent events as psychologically proximal or distal. We examined how psychological distance shapes judgments about utilitarian moral dilemmas, like killing one to save many. We modified dilemmas to vary in psychological distance, and asked participants to judge morally ambiguous actions. Utilitarian acts were considered less acceptable following “proximal” than “distal” dilemmas. Our results support CLT, and demonstrate the importance of evaluating the materials used to elicit moral judgments.

ABSTRACT. We explore the hypothesis that literary style deepens empathy rather than estranges readers from story characters. The present study explores the relation between the degree to which foregrounding is processed and self-reported empathy for a character. Open responses were categorized as shallow processing, failed foregrounding, partial foregrounding, and full foregrounding, and compared to scores on the Comprehensive State Empathy Scale. Results suggest that processing foregrounding does indeed relate to empathic understanding.

ABSTRACT. In this study, we investigated whether and to what extent scaffolding supported kindergarteners’ inference-making. Kindergarten students received scaffolding in the context of the Early Language Comprehension Individualized Instruction (ELCII). Linear mixed-effects modeling indicated that even though scaffolding increased accuracy of inferences generally, students who had high baseline language comprehension benefited most. Students’ home language did not influence the effect of scaffolding on students’ inference performance. Implications for instructional practice are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Evaluation abilities are increasingly required to face the amount of information read on Internet. One way to evaluate the reliability of information is sourcing, a process that appears challenging for teenagers. In this study, we explored the role of Advanced forms of Theory of Mind (AToM) in evaluating information when reading multiple documents. In particular, we were interested in the specific role of AToM in attributing sources’ intentions. Our results suggest such a specific involvement.

ABSTRACT. In this study I further explore the processing and comprehension of satirical news texts. I compared self-paced reading times between minimally different satirical and non-satirical news texts, perceptions of text sincerity, main point summaries, and readers’ Need for Cognition (NFC). Results indicate satirical news texts take longer to process, but also that longer reading times and lower NFC are negatively associated with the ability to recognize satirical intent, a necessary step to comprehend satirical meaning.

ABSTRACT. Discourse relations can be signaled by both lexical and non-lexical cues. Little is known about how non-lexical cues influence various aspects of discourse relation processing. The present study contributes to this line of research by investigating whether a specific non-lexical cue, gerund free adjuncts (GFA), influences interpretations of and expectations for causal discourse relations. We find evidence for GFAs as a cue for discourse relations in a continuation study, but not in an interpretation study.

ABSTRACT. This study explores good and poor comprehender college students’ global and local bridging inference generation. Think-aloud responses were analyzed to understand where in the text connections were made, as well as if connections were made to highly causal text. A multivariate analysis of variance did not reveal a statistically significant difference between groups; however, exploratory descriptive analyses provided potential differences by text. Results contribute to understanding how readers develop causal coherence during reading.

ABSTRACT. Learning can be made more efficient when learners generate the to-be-learned text contents instead of passively receiving them. In contrast to studies using word generation, studies using text generation have failed to produce the text-generation effect consistently and reliably raising the question of contextual factors that possibly moderate its occurrence and magnitude. A multi-level meta-analysis was conducted to provide an overall estimate of the text generation effect and to identify theoretically and practically relevant moderators.

ABSTRACT. Scientific evaluations about socio-scientific topics involve reasoning and reflection. We compared students’ written responses when completing the Model-Evidence Link (MEL) scaffold between two writing tools, each administered in a different instructional setting (typewritten: virtual classroom) and (handwritten: in-person classroom). Reflective reasoning scores in students’ written responses revealed no meaningful difference in mean scores of students’ reflective thinking between typewritten and handwriting. However, students expressed higher levels of quasi-reflective thinking when typing.

ABSTRACT. We develop an intervention to improve students’ reasoning about different evidence types – one significant challenge in students’ evidence-based reasoning. This intervention teaches students about three evidence types – comparative, correlational, and causal – commonly presented in the popular press. We found students’ to be better at identifying evidence types, drawing evidence-appropriate conclusions, and evaluating evidence-based conclusions at post-test and at a three-week follow-up test than at pre-test, finding medium to large effects.

ABSTRACT. Little is known about the affective and (meta)cognitive strategies learners employ while processing academic feedback. To better understand these processes, graduate students thought-aloud while reviewing feedback on a real classroom assignment. We also explored whether changing the feedback context (i.e., providing an exemplar in addition to feedback) would promote more and higher-level engagement with the feedback. This will inform whether or not comprehension training is a promising pathway for developing students’ feedback-processing skills.

ABSTRACT. Engaging in explanation while studying science texts can improve comprehension. The present study varied the timing of explanation activities and restudy opportunities before taking final comprehension tests on a set of 6 topics studied as part of an Introductory Psychology course. When students had the opportunity to restudy in the same session, comprehension benefited from explanation activities. However, no benefit was seen when activities were done in a session prior to the restudy opportunity.

ABSTRACT. The study used a 2(online: think-aloud, self-explain) x 3(offline: reread, free recall, explanatory retrieval) design to examine how different strategies affect science text comprehension. Preliminary analyses revealed a main effect of online strategy, but no effect of offline strategy. Further work will examine possible interactions and effects of individual differences. We will also explore how the quality of online processes impact offline processes. Results will inform best practices for real-world science learning.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this study was to improve students' reading comprehension by developing a digital reading module. The experimental group received 40 minutes of instructional treatment per week for four weeks, while the control group students read freely at the same time, students' performance in vocabulary, sentence comprehension, and reading comprehension was then evaluated. The results showed that the students improved their reading comprehension and were highly motivated after instruction.

ABSTRACT. Adolescents read conflicting texts about vegetarianism in an alternating format, or all arguments for one side before switching to opposing arguments. After, students’ metacognitive awareness was assessed, and they wrote essays from memory. Pro-vegetarian beliefs predicted taking a pro-vegetarian stance, inclusion of more belief-consistent and fewer belief-inconsistent ideas, and fewer mentions of sources. The alternating format, however, promoted source presence. The findings have implications for comprehension theories and applications for adolescents’ web reading experiences.

ABSTRACT. According to approaches on collaboration, we investigated students’ cognitive and emotional engagement with online COVID-19 information. In an experiment, N = 109 students read two conflicting texts about COVID-19 testing and reflected about how they handle such conflicting evidence either in an individual setting (n = 49) or in dialogues (n = 60, 30 dyads). In dialogues, participants more often discussed without providing any evidence and less often engaged emotionally when discussing evidence from texts.

ABSTRACT. Participants were given articles about childhood vaccines and given a choice of which texts they wanted to read. The think-aloud protocols for the top three participants who were protected and bottom three participants who acquired misinformation were coded. All participants engaged in self-explanation, but the quality of the explanations showed a qualitative difference. The results indicate that there are multiple ways to protect oneself from acquiring misinformation.

ABSTRACT. People often overestimate what they know, and even may do so after reading introductory-level explanatory texts. We examined whether warnings about such overestimates can help reduce any post-reading overconfidence. Participants read an introductory text on either natural selection or comets. Before and afterwards, they judged their level of knowledge about natural selection. Exposure to the introductory natural selection text increased participants’ self-rated knowledge on the topic, and warnings did not seem to influence those judgments.

ABSTRACT. Whether second language (L2) learners maintain temporal coherence or inter-sentential links of temporal order is controversial. In this study, to explore how reading instruction helps L2 readers maintain temporal coherence, 20 Japanese L2 learners read short English narratives that included temporal coherence breaks under normal and instructed conditions. Statistical analyses of the post-reading interviews revealed no differences in inconsistency detection for each reading condition.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the features of PowerPoints that students produce and associate these features with the quality of students’ oral presentations and information use behaviors during PowerPoint creation. The MD-TRACE Model (Rouet & Britt, 2011) and Mayer’s SOI framework (1996) were used to examine students’ selection, organization, and integration during PowerPoint creation. Students were found to be more effective at selecting and organizing than at integrating information when creating PowerPoints.

ABSTRACT. One-hundred and thirteen undergraduates read and recalled two opposing documents on the use of opioids to treat chronic pain. One third were instructed to summarize the texts, another third to evaluate the claims, and the last third to evaluate their personal agreement with the texts. The results suggest that the instructions may have affected the writing task, but not the underlying representation of texts in memory.

ABSTRACT. We studied if primary school students could integrate information from multiple documents and refer to sources in a post-reading essay. Students read six texts with discrepancies and wrote a short essay, which was scored for the type of ideas included (literal, inferential, wrong), the use of favor and against arguments, and the number of sources. Students seldom used source information and tended to recall literal ideas. Older students included more inferences and against arguments.

ABSTRACT. Fifty undergraduates completed a prior knowledge assessment, read either four (target-only) or eight texts on a socio-scientific issue, then recalled information from each of the four shared, target texts. Participants that read four additional, non-target texts recalled less target information, made more intrusions from non-target information, and included more prior knowledge than the target only group. Source monitoring errors may reflect this type of integration of information across texts, making differentiating information across sources difficult.

ABSTRACT. Reading is a primary source of learning in higher education and beyond. Sourcing (i.e., attending to author information) is one reading strategy associated with improved reading comprehension. In this study, we examine the effect of sourcing instructions on reading comprehension for multiple psychology texts. Our findings will have important implications for reading instruction strategies in higher education and can inform theories on the mental representations of source-content.

ABSTRACT. Undergraduates read and evaluated reliable and questionably-reliable search engine results regarding the relationship between playing violent videogames and aggression for a class assignment. Students also completed prior topic beliefs and reading comprehension skill assessments. When accounting for students’ prior beliefs, reading skill was a significant negative predictor for trustworthiness ratings, but only for texts designed to be less reliable. These findings provide insight into the underlying skills readers may utilize when evaluating questionably-reliable sources.

ABSTRACT. What makes readers focus on aesthetic object properties? Experiment 1 (N=159) showed that participants’ focus on aesthetic properties is stronger after reading a narrative than an expository text. This effect was not modulated by information provided about textual characters, or readers’ identification with them. Experiment 2 (N=159) again demonstrated that reading a narrative leads to a stronger focus on aesthetics than reading an expository text. For literary narratives, this effect was mediated by literary features.

ABSTRACT. We examined whether a characteristic relevant to the protagonist but not known to a supporting character influenced processing of a sentence that was inconsistent with the characteristic. In Experiment 1, the protagonist asked a question that was inconsistent with the protagonist-relevant characteristic. In Experiment 2, the supporting character asked a question that was inconsistent with the characteristic. Readers were disrupted on the target sentence, independent of whether the character had knowledge of the protagonist-relevant characteristic.

ABSTRACT. This study explored how adult readers from different backgrounds process visual narratives. A contrastive case study compared adult literacy learners, struggling college readers, and proficient college readers. Analysis of participants’ think-aloud protocols demonstrate how adult learners approach meaning-making as well as readers’ strengths and challenges in understanding visual narratives. Findings across the contrastive cases reveal important differences across groups, including explanations, continuity monitoring, and level of focus.

ABSTRACT. Some evidence (Kidd & Castano, 2013) suggests that reading literary fiction leads to an increase in theory of mind ability, particularly affective skills like identifying emotional states in others. Replication attempts have proved mixed, though. In this research, we sought to replicate and extend these findings. The extension was to visual perspective-taking. Participants read either literary, popular, or non-fiction and completed a measure of theory of mind. Results are pending.

ABSTRACT. We examined whether reports of visual imagery and transportation differed for mono- and multilingual readers as well as whether these potential differences were moderated by instructions. Mono and multilingual participants (n=313) were given instructions to read for a) comprehension or b) focus on specific textual elements; they then read a text and responded to thought probes periodically. Results revealed a significant interaction between language and instructional condition on both reports of visual imagery and transportation.

ABSTRACT. Collocations are words that naturally co-occur in a linguistic context (Benson, Benson, & Ilson, 1986; Nation, 2001). Prior research has suggested that compared to native speakers, bilinguals show lower comprehension of collocations, and misuse these constructions (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993; Laufer & Waldman, 2011). The purpose of this study was to determine the extent which Spanish-English bilinguals comprehend collocational phrases, evaluate whether English language proficiency impacts comprehension, and utilization of translation strategies.

ABSTRACT. This study introduces readability formulas based on sentence-embeddings and compares them to traditional readability formulas and more advanced readability formulas that have been developed using natural language processing tools. The goal of the paper is to assess the strength of sentence-embedding readability formulas compared to previous formulas. Our results indicate that a model based on SBERT embeddings far outperformed traditional readability formulas, more advanced NLP formulas, and models based on Word2Vec and Universal Sentence Encodings.

ABSTRACT. We explore writing data from users-in-the-wild of TheAnonymizedTool for potential for automated feedback on genre. The tool asks users to pick their genre; assuming the choice signals intention, can we tell whether the writer realized it? Focusing on narrative, we found that, as a group, users-in-the-wild who indicated a narrative intent produced texts that are within the boundaries of narrative writing; however, a small number of samples were identified as belonging to a different genre.

ABSTRACT. This paper introduces a new large-scale corpus labeled in terms of text difficulty using an extant readability measures (Lexile score) and investigates whether corpora grounded on an extant readability measure show properties of text cohesion as a function of text difficulty that conform with pre-established research through correlation analyses. The results showed that such corpora show stronger local cohesion and weaker global cohesion compared to a corpus labeled using human judgment of text difficulty.

ABSTRACT. Narrative texts are inherently social, but how to measure text socialness (i.e., how social a text is) is unclear. We assessed LIWC-22 as one possible way measure text socialness in children’s fiction and nonfiction picture books. Fiction books were significantly higher in some (Total pronouns, Social Processes, Perception, and Conversation) but not all (Drives, Cognition, and Affect) hypothesized categories compared to nonfiction books. Therefore, LIWC-22 captured some but not all differences in text socialness.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates the relationship between Part-of-speech (POS) tags and Bradley-Terry model-based human judgment readability scores. The goal of the paper is to evaluate the predictability of POS tag on text readability. Python spaCy was used for POS tagging, and multiple linear regression was conducted with the CommonLit Ease of Readability (CLEAR) Corpus. The results show that 30 percent of the variance for the readability score can be explained by the POS tags alone.

ABSTRACT. Sourcing behaviors are critical during multiple-document comprehension; however, they can be difficult to measure. We used NLP tools to calculate linguistic features of students’ constructed responses during a multiple-document task. These features were then used in machine learning models to identify sourcing behaviors. The findings reveal theoretically-supported linguistic markers of sourcing strategies at lexical, syntactic, and semantic levels. The study shows that such machine learning approaches are promising for both practical application and theoretical testing.

ABSTRACT. Speed-reading applications typically intend to increase reading speed without impairing comprehension. Despite their popularity, research on the efficacy of speed-reading applications is sparse. We assessed reading speed, comprehension, and eye-movements of participants before and after they received a speed-reading training, a metacognitive training, or no training. Reading performance in the training groups was higher compared to the control group and we argue that readers’ metacognition may be a mechanism underlying the efficacy of speed-reading applications.

ABSTRACT. In this study, we analyze the relationship between comprehension and metacomprehension in expository and informative narrative texts when answering different questions following Kintsch’s comprehension model (textbase/mental model). 88 participants read different expository texts and answered multiple-choice questions. Expository texts were presented in two formats. Results showed differences in the correlations comprehension-metacomprehension between textbase and situation model for the expository text, but not for the informative narrative text. Results are discussed according to previous research.

ABSTRACT. This study reports analyses of constructed responses that students generated while reading expository texts. We examined how comprehension strategy use varied across tasks and populations, using six datasets with over 1,500 students. Community college and developmental undergraduate students relied on bridging and elaboration, while high schoolers and undergraduates relied on paraphrasing and bridging. At the task level, other- and self-explanations had a higher frequency of paraphrasing and bridging, with think-alouds displaying more even strategy use.

ABSTRACT. This study examined whether performing a pre-search “induction task” involving either the spelling (perceptual task) or the meaning (semantic task) of words modified the way 10 years old children scanned a text to answer questions. Performing the semantic rather than the perceptual induction task resulted in children making fewer errors, particularly for inferential questions. Children with high lexical quality scores spent less time finding the answers and made fewer errors than children with lower scores.

ABSTRACT. We explored whether reading goals influence learning of scientific content from expository and informative narrative texts. Participants were randomly assigned a goal (entertainment, study, control) and a text version (expository, narrative). After reading and thinking-aloud, participants completed a test of their comprehension of scientific content common to both texts. Results demonstrated no effects of text version or reading goals on performance. Think-aloud responses showed clear differences across text versions, but few differences based on goals.

ABSTRACT. Externally-given reading instructions modifies how a text is read. One kind of these instructions might be different-level questions posed before the text (pre-questions). In this study, we examined how readers of different ages adapt their reading processes in order to answer a high- or low-level pre-questions. From early ages readers detected if a question was higher or lower-level, but only at higher educational levels proper strategies were taken in order to answer high-level questions.

ABSTRACT. This study compares the efficacy of two computer-based interventions to improve reading comprehension: one based on strategy instruction (TuinLECweb) and the other on question-answering training with corrective feedback (AutoLEC). Moreover, students’ use of instructional elements was analyzed. Results showed that TuinLECweb benefitted deep comprehension, whereas AutoLEC improved text-based comprehension. Besides, time spent in the instructional phase of TuinLECweb correlated to the posttest, indicating the relevance of taking advantage of explicit instruction to improve reading comprehension.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, the gender asterisk has gained popularity as a nonbinary gender form in German. A word-picture-matching task was developed to test which mental representations it activates in readers. Role nouns in either masculine, feminine, or asterisk form were matched with pictures of persons with male, female, or nonbinary characteristics. Higher acceptance rates and faster reaction times were found for all images following the asterisk. This suggests the asterisk leading to more inclusive associations.

ABSTRACT. The gender asterisk is intended to explicitly represent all genders in German typographically. However, according to a widespread argumentation, it impairs comprehensibility. In an experiment with 118 students, subjects either read a text with masculine-only forms or a text with gender asterisks in singular forms, and subsequently completed a comprehensibility questionnaire. Results showed significant impairments by the gender asterisk (d = 0.82). A follow-up study currently examines whether the effect also applies to plural forms.

ABSTRACT. We sought to find if the trustworthiness of Document Sources (DS) influenced the evaluation of Embedded Sources (ES). 104 undergraduates read two texts on treatments for a disease, one by a trustworthy DS and one by an untrustworthy DS. Results indicate that ES read under trustworthy DS was seen as more trustworthy and their medical recommendation was more often seen as the best. Texts from untrustworthy DS also were read for longer.

ABSTRACT. Little is known about the neurocognitive bases of word identification and word-to-text integration processes during second language (L2) reading comprehension. This study sought to reveal neural differences of these processes between first language (L1) and L2 reading. Chinese-speaking learners of English and native English speakers were recruited to read expository texts. We estimated correlations between activations and fixation durations or word positions, and identified regions engaged in L1 and L2 word identification and word-to-text integration.

ABSTRACT. We compared the acceptance rates of scalar sentences with all/some among 50 native English speakers, 50 native Japanese speakers who read stimuli written in Japanese, and another 50 native Japanese speakers who read sentences in English. Only the Patently True and Patently False conditions showed significant differences between the groups, while the Pragmatic condition did not. Japanese participants are less confirmatory in their acceptance of simple implicatures in L2 than in L1.

ABSTRACT. The act of comparison is a central aspect of human cognition. We report an experiment on comparatives ambiguous between cardinal and proportional readings, using examples related to the COVID pandemic. Our findings provide new evidence for semantic effects on the interpretation of comparative ambiguities, and point to a relation between marked meanings being expressed with marked structures.

ABSTRACT. We investigated how reactions to health messages encouraging COVID vaccines are shaped by perspectival cues from pronouns. We find that pronouns do not have across-the-board effects and are modulated by participants’ attitudes: When “you” describes a behavior the participant disagrees with, the participant views that behavior as less persuasive compared to the same behavior described using “we” or “people.” Effects of discourse-level variations should be considered in conjunction with listeners’ attitudes.