ABSTRACT. Understanding the demands of comprehension tasks forms part of skilled reading. An instructional program was designed and implemented collaboratively with teachers from four schools. Sixth grade students (n=189) took part in 10 teacher-led workshops addressing each of a series of key strategic skills (e.g., task model comprehension, document search, inference production) or in a control condition. The intervention improved students' understanding of task demands and content comprehension. We discuss limits and perspectives.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the effects of readymade versus self-generated graphic organizers (GOs) on elementary children’s learning. Seventy-two students were randomly assigned to three conditions: text-only, readymade GO, or self-generated GO. Results showed no significant difference in cognitive load or interest. On the immediate test, the text-only group outperformed the readymade GO group. On the delayed test, the self-generated GO group outperformed both the text-only and readymade GO groups, demonstrating benefits of self-generative learning for children.

ABSTRACT. Cross-gender epistemic-belief analysis suggests males’ inflexible cognitions about learning (non-amenable, non-evolving nature of knowledge), inconducive to sophisticated EB development in higher-education. Cross-age ICC-analysis indicates egalitarianism, empathic/affiliative and communicative flexibility of younger preservice-teachers. Cross-teaching-experience analysis of ICC reveals less-experienced student-teachers’ edge in Empathy-subscale, calling for supports for elder student-teachers. Developmental trends in metadiscourse with non/para-verbals reveal strengthened argumentation and epistemic credence. Implications for awareness-raising of epistemic-understandings, interpersonal-communicative-competences in teacher-education are offered.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the relationship between a small group of middle school teachers’ pedagogical beliefs about teaching and their observed teaching behaviors. Through the use of interview data and observational data, this study explores teachers’ beliefs and practices through a mixed-methods exploratory-sequential design. Pulling from teacher’s reflections and literature on beliefs and student-centered teaching practices, we examine the results of the matched and unmatched teacher beliefs and practices observed by the researchers.

ABSTRACT. This study demonstrates reactivation, integration, and validation processes in illustrated text reading. Participants’ (N = 143) gaze was tracked while reading consistent or inconsistent texts. In the latter, an early picture contradicted a later target sentence. Inconsistencies led to longer target sentence reading times, with more and longer fixation times on the target sentence and increased switching between it and the picture. Few participants remembered the inconsistencies, suggesting limited awareness of the conflict during reading.

ABSTRACT. This study compared fourth grade children’s comprehension processes and outcomes between expository texts and videos. A think-aloud protocol was used to measure processes during reading and during watching. Results showed no significant differences in comprehension processes and outcomes between text and video. Additional latent profile analyses identified four distinct comprehension profiles. The majority of children fell in the same profile for text and video, indicating that they used a similar approach for understanding different media.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates the screen inferiority effect in early adolescents by examining the impact of reading medium (paper vs. digital) on processing time, text comprehension, and calibration bias, focusing on the moderating role of working memory. Results show that digital reading reduces comprehension and increases calibration bias, with WM moderating its effects on processing time. Sequential mediation analysis reveals that screen reading leads to shallower processing, which increases calibration bias and ultimately hinders text comprehension.

ABSTRACT. The study examined differences in text comprehension between paper and screen using open-ended questions. While comprehension and writing performance did not differ significantly, digital tasks led to higher self-efficacy and more lookbacks. Cognitive ability, particularly verbal IQ, predicted comprehension scores more strongly than socioeconomic status. Results indicate the need for standardized digital reading assessment tools and further research on metacognitive, age, and gender variables to better understand media effects on comprehension.

ABSTRACT. The study investigated whether focused attention and explicit labelling of characters’ emotions in stories during reading would increase children’s tendency to identify and respond affectively to others’ emotional states. Children aged 8-10 years (N=144) read fiction stories while completing tasks designed to encourage attention to the characters’ emotions. Results indicated that task-based reading significantly improved cognitive empathy, but not affective empathy. However, increased affective empathy was associated with greater immersion into the story during reading.

ABSTRACT. The study examined the impact of the emotional content of texts on how children aged 9 to 11 locate information within texts to answer questions. Children made fewer errors when looking for answers, particularly to inferential questions, in negative texts than in positive ones. In addition, children made longer and, depending on question type, more numerous fixations, when confronted with negative texts. This suggests that negative emotional content promotes children's attention.

ABSTRACT. Message convincingness is influenced by emotional valence, arousal, and processing fluency. We examined their individual and relative effects by having participants rate short persuasive texts. Texts that elicited positive feelings, intense feelings, or were easy to read increased convincingness and message acceptance to varying degrees. Valence had the strongest influence, followed by arousal and fluency. These findings highlight the importance of studying these factors in conjunction to better understand what makes a text convincing.

ABSTRACT. Conveying environmental information using description is common. Path descriptions and their landmark features are associated with the formation of a spatial model. This study examines the role of landmarks (nature-, built-, and function-based) in path descriptions on emotional state and spatial recall. After listening to path descriptions, participants self-evaluated their emotional state and performed a map drawing task. The results showed that an individual's positive emotional state and landmark recall primarily increase spatial recall.

ABSTRACT. We tested our model of online navigation in a critical internet reading task. The results suggest that reading in a digital space is marked by a joining of reader characteristics (e.g., metacognitive resolution) with the texts they encountered. Effective navigation strategies (e.g., locating task-specific information and changing navigational paths responding to the textual environment readers are encountering) result in greater learning about the topic, which in turn enables more critical discussion and engagement.

ABSTRACT. Readers often do not engage with source information during reading, and research on source credibility’s effects on text processing is scarce. We measured 83 participants’ beliefs on socioscientific topics and showed them 76 mock-up tweets on these topics by credible and noncredible authors in a within-subjects eye tracking experiment. Results showed that incongruency between readers’ beliefs and source credibility slows down processing and directs attention to source information, indicating sensitivity to source-belief inconsistencies during reading.

ABSTRACT. This study examines 101 readers’ judgments of the stance expressed in six tweets about Roe v. Wade as compared with their judgment about the authors’ own stances. Readers more accurately interpreted tweet stance than author stance, particularly for stance-neutral tweets, and the reader characteristics that predicted tweet stance comprehension (age, political ideology) did not predict author stance comprehension. Assessing author intent in stance-neutral tweets has distinct comprehension challenges.

ABSTRACT. Exposure to news online is often incidental, requiring individuals to engage with and evaluate unfamiliar content. This study examines how message subjectivity, medium (social media vs. news websites), and individual characteristics influence news readers’ online behavior. Across three experiments, we found that readers recognized subjective language and used it to assess the trustworthiness of unfamiliar news sources, though subjectivity did not increase engagement. Familiarity with social media news was linked to higher trust and engagement.

ABSTRACT. This paper describes the effects of a professional development program designed to integrate critical evaluation of online information sources in diverse school subjects. Seven teachers from one middle school participated in a six-month program grounded in the AIR model. Using a mixed-method design, data were collected from the teachers and 118 students, divided into experimental and control groups. This paper analyzes teachers’ implementation of the program and its effects on students’ evaluation criteria and strategies.

ABSTRACT. Conspiracy thinking constructs situation models by assuming secret groups orchestrate events (Zwaan, 2022, 2024). Experiments tested this by having participants explain unrelated events in a fictional country using different frames. The conspiracy frame was easily adopted, even when alternative frames, like decaying infrastructure, better fit the events.

ABSTRACT. The gender star is one of the most popular gender-fair forms in German. In order to test its effectiveness, we replicated a word-picture matching task originally conducted on a student sample with a more diverse group. While the star has previously been shown to function well as an all-inclusive form in students, results show that it works less well in older non-students. These findings highlight the importance of testing diverse populations when investigating gender-fair language.

ABSTRACT. This study examines middle-aged adults' (45-65 years) ability to discern online misinformation through a European survey (N=635). Analysis revealed that epistemic beliefs and reasoning capabilities significantly predicted misinformation discernment, with evidence-based evaluation enhancing accuracy and emotional assessment reducing it. Two-sided argumentation strongly predicted discernment ability, while reliance on emotion increased susceptibility to conspiratorial thinking. These findings have important implications for developing targeted interventions to combat online misinformation among middle-aged populations.

ABSTRACT. The congeniality bias refers to humans’ tendency to preferably select belief-consistent rather than belief-inconsistent information. Two experiments suggest that a work’s fictionality is not associated with this bias. Instead, the more a text’s content is inconsistent with prior beliefs, the more likely people seem to prefer an expository text over a fictional or nonfictional narrative. Since narratives evoke stronger emotions than expository texts, negative emotions induced by belief-inconsistent narratives may be deemed worth avoiding.

ABSTRACT. Nowadays, multicultural companies sell their products and services internationally, which presents certain linguistic and marketing challenges. In addition to adapting the language of advertisements to the needs of the customers, companies must take into account different cultural values of the target market. Through quantitative and qualitative methods, this research explores the pragmatic effect of culturally adapted Facebook posts of Volkswagen and Fiat on German, Italian and Hungarian customers.

ABSTRACT. Behavioral alignment supports performance in asymmetric roles (e.g., “Director” and “Matcher”), but it's unclear whether it also emerges when roles are symmetric. Forty dyads completed route planning trials in symmetric (same information) and asymmetric roles (one partner had privileged information). Dyads aligned attention and language more in asymmetric roles because options were evaluated more independently in symmetric roles. These results underscore the task-specific nature of alignment, providing insights for improving communication in diverse contexts.

ABSTRACT. Previous research suggests that information mentioned during dialogue is frequently encoded in association with the current partner. This raises the question of which partner-specific cues might contribute to the subsequent retrieval of information from memory. Following a joint communication task, individuals were tested on recognition memory for referent labels in a context cued by their partner’s face and/or voice. We examine whether partner-specific visual and auditory cues can facilitate access to information encoded during conversation.

ABSTRACT. The study examined gaze preference during speech comprehension in 5- to 8-year-old children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and typically developing (TD) peers. While listening to stories in audio-visual (AV) or audio-only (A) formats, TD children showed better comprehension. In AV, both groups preferred the mouth, especially TD children. In A, both focused on the eyes, but TD children maintained fixation longer. Gaze patterns are proposed as markers of atypical development or school readiness.

ABSTRACT. Over the past ten years, there has been increased interest in the study of cognitive processes that emerge during real-time problem solving within multidisciplinary teams. This study follows a multidisciplinary team of scientists as they collaborated in situ on a research project. Their discussions were recorded, transcribed, and coded for co-occurrences of relational reasoning and strategic processing. Findings highlight key patterns in these dimensions as they pertain to effective problem solving in teams.

ABSTRACT. This presentation examines how players introduce new referents into the common ground during dialogue. In psycholinguistics, research on common ground is typically conducted in experimental settings. Here, we propose an analysis of reference markers—such as lexical choices, determiners, and locative descriptions—in a naturalistic context: escape room interactions. Based on four recorded escape room sessions in English, we investigate verbal interactions through the lenses of cognitive linguistics and psychology.

ABSTRACT. The study examines how instruction in prompt generation influences secondary school students’ integration of socio-scientific controversies . Using an experimental design with a waiting list control group, it assesses the impact of this instruction on students’ processing (i.e. quality of prompts, coherence of the discourse) and products (i.e. cognitive load, the evaluation of the quality of AI-generated information, and the quality of the produced synthesis).

ABSTRACT. This study examined the association between online credibility evaluation skills and related self-efficacy and whether grade level moderates this association. Altogether, 728 students (aged 10–17) completed an online credibility evaluation task and a self-efficacy measure. Structural equation modeling revealed a positive association between self-efficacy and online credibility evaluation skills when students evaluated more credible texts. In contrast, a negative association was found for less credible texts. Grade level did not moderate the association.

ABSTRACT. This study examined online credibility evaluation skills of 728 students: fourth, sixth, eighth, and 10th graders. In a grade-invariant task, students read four online texts and evaluated them regarding author expertise, benevolence, and quality of evidence. Latent class analysis identified four types of online evaluator: intermediate, trusting, emergent, and distrustful. Students with reading difficulties struggled with online credibility evaluation, underscoring the need for support tailored to their needs as evaluators.

ABSTRACT. We examined comprehension as a function of belief consistency of information. Participants read a belief consistent and inconsistent text on one of three topics, followed by a sentence recognition test. Recognition discrimination did not differ by belief consistency. There was a response bias at the textbase level. Participants were more likely to false alarm to belief consistent sentences. Beliefs also changed significantly after reading. Beliefs may influence the extent to which content seems familiar.

ABSTRACT. Substantial evidence shows that an utterance’s speech act (question/statement/command) strongly influences perspective computations during real-time comprehension, impacting referential predictions. But what if the speech act is unclear? In a Visual-World experiment, we leverage the fact that utterances in Mandarin can be ambiguous (question vs. statement) before sentence-end. Data show that general task goals allow listeners to correctly infer speech acts and anticipate appropriate referents, highlighting the importance of broader communicative context in perspective-taking across languages.

ABSTRACT. This study examined connectives' effects on processing and comprehension across different types of coherence relations in Chilean struggling readers. Using eye-tracking, 110 primary students read texts with/without connectives. Results showed distinct patterns: causal relations had faster initial processing but more regressions with connectives; contrastive relations showed longer initial processing but fewer regressions; additive relations followed similar patterns. While clear processing differences emerged, these did not translate into comprehension differences.

ABSTRACT. To obtain valid and reliable questionnaire data it is essential that questionnaire items are comprehensible. This eye-tracking study investigated the role of reading comprehension ability in comprehension difficulties with negated items. Forty-nine adults read 16 affirmative and 16 negated items while their eye movements were recorded. Results showed effects of item type (affirmative/negated) and reading comprehension ability on total fixation duration (among other variables) for item statements and response scale, but no interaction effects.

ABSTRACT. Sentences differ in how much they contribute to the overall meaning of a text and central ideas are usually remembered better than peripheral ideas. In the present study, we will suggest a new computational measure of sentence centrality based on distributed semantic models (DSM). We will demonstrate that DSM-centrality correlates substantially with human centrality ratings and predicts participants’ eye movement data from the MECO corpus while controlling for sentence length and position.

ABSTRACT. This study tested phonological and semantic disruption hypotheses by examining eye movements during reading under different noise conditions (word lists, pseudo-words, babble noise). Results showed that both phonological and semantic factors contribute to reading interference. Semantic disruption was more evident in later reading stages, while phonological effects persisted throughout. Decoding skills and working memory moderated these effects, highlighting individual cognitive differences in sensitivity to noise.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated how internal complexity affects coherence relation processing across different age groups. Sixty-seven participants (22 children, 25 young adults, 20 older adults) read texts varying in complexity levels (high: causal-negative-subjective-implicit vs. low: additive-positive-objective-explicit). Results showed complexity effects primarily during later processing stages, with age-specific patterns. Young adults demonstrated more efficient processing compared to children and older adults. Findings suggest complexity effects vary by developmental stage and processing phase, with implications for text comprehension.

ABSTRACT. Close to a third of US adults read at elementary levels, and this has financial implications in all areas of life such as health, global competitiveness, and intergenerational transmission of skills. This presentation will focus on decades of research that I have conducted with adult literacy students: research challenges unique to adult literacy, reliability/validity of testing, profiles of adult learners, and their difficulties and strengths in oral language, background knowledge, reading, writing, and psychosocial characteristics.

ABSTRACT. This study uses process data (actions, timestamps) to examine adults’ strategies on a digital problem-solving item by literacy level and item accuracy. Using hidden Markov models, we found key differences in strategy use (e.g., differences in efficiency levels) by adults with higher and lower literacy levels and by item accuracy. This study helps us understand how adults, especially those with lower skills, engage with digital assessments, which can inform test-taking strategies in adult education settings.

ABSTRACT. This quantitative study examines multilingual adults’ reading abilities using CASAS scores and literacy perceptions. Participants self-identified as multilingual (N = 98) or monolingual (N = 100). Multilingual participants included four groups: Bilingual Readers (ease in both languages), Home Language Readers (ease in home language), English Readers (ease in English), and Emerging Readers (difficulty in both). Bilingual Readers scored highest, showcasing multilingual strengths. Additional work will investigate item bias to identify systemic patterns affecting multilingual readers.

ABSTRACT. Spoken and signed Languages have significant differences in how events are conveyed. These differences have important implications on how events are understood and remembered for first and second language users of them. In this presentation, we will discuss two studies that were conducted on adult sign language learners and deaf, native speakers of a signed language. These studies explore the implications of language status on processing during experiencing narratives and memory for those narratives.

ABSTRACT. This qualitative study focuses on examining reading comprehension strategies employed in adult literacy instruction through a multiple case study with adult basic education programs to identify themes related to reading comprehension instruction within and across cases. Findings from this exploratory study highlight gaps in reading comprehension instruction needed for adult education teachers to help improve comprehension skills for adult learners. Implications for the development of new professional development and/or teacher preparation support will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. A branching narrative is one in which there are different sequences of events depending on choices made by the reader. We conjectured that making such choices requires the reader to become actively involved with the protagonist and would lead to greater perspective taking. However, when we compared branching and linear versions of two narratives, we found this predicted effect only for one story. We discuss a possible text feature that may interact with this effect.

ABSTRACT. Fantasy text often violates general world knowledge (GWK). But when we become familiar with a fantasy character, their impossible abilities become part of our knowledge base, which supports impossible actions. We used well-known fantasy characters to explore the impact of fantasy-related inconsistencies that violated passage context but were consistent with GWK. In Experiment 1, we elaborated on the context that competes with GWK. In Experiment 2, we elaborated on GWK that would compete with context.

ABSTRACT. What readers want to happen can influence comprehension processes in addition to and sometimes even counter to what narrative events indicate should happen. But projects to date have not hypothesized about nor tested whether positive and negative event preferences exert differential effects on narrative comprehension and memory. In two experiments we found that negative preferences incur predictably stronger processing effects, helping exemplify that non-normative expectations can lead to distinguishable effects during and after reading.

ABSTRACT. 200 healthy adults formed two groups based on gender: 101 females and 99 males. The groups were comparable in age, education, cognitive reserve and performance on cognitive tasks. Narrative samples were elicited using five picture stimuli and were analyzed using a multilevel discourse analysis. The findings highlight sex-related differences in narrative production, particularly at the macrolinguistic level. The study was funded by Next Generation EU, PRIN 2022PNRR (project number: G53D23007250001)

ABSTRACT. Fantasy journeys are an established intervention for inducing relaxation. However, it remains unclear whether fantasy journeys have greater effects than neutral texts and whether inconsistencies in fantasy journeys reduce relaxation effects. Listening to a consistent fantasy journey had a greater relaxation effect, mediated by higher transportation, than listening to a neutral text. Transportation but not relaxation was higher in the consistent than in the inconsistent fantasy journey. Transportation was positively affected by perceived logical coherence.

ABSTRACT. This study examines how narrative text features impact student response choices in the MOCCA-CAT assessment. Using 319 narrative items coded for nine features, the study analyzes response data from Grades 2 and 6-8. Descriptive analyses reveal variations in feature frequencies across primary and secondary grade levels, with differences in features such as first-person perspective, child-centeredness, and goal explicitness. Findings provide insights into how narrative features shape comprehension and inform assessment design for diverse student populations.

ABSTRACT. We examined the effect of filled pauses on recall, speakers’ credibility and listeners’ emotions during expository discourse comprehension. English speakers listened to an excerpt about the environmental impact of technology, and performed a main ideas, listeners’ emotions, free recall, and speaker’s credibility estimation tasks. Filled pauses did not have an effect on recall or listeners’ estimations of speakers’ credibility. Listeners were more likely to indicate that they had experienced emotions when filled pauses were absent.

ABSTRACT. Dance is a universal practice known to enhance cognitive wellbeing. This study explores whether dance enhances embodied mindfulness skills and examines additional pathways to well-being through a 4E cognition lens. An online mixed-methods study of 64 dancers (ages 21–45) used the Embodied Mindfulness Questionnaire and thematic analysis to investigate psychological well-being. Findings support the "Connection to Body" subscale, highlighting how dance shapes embodiment and overall well-being across diverse styles and sociocultural contexts.

ABSTRACT. Research on learners’ question generation and their knowledge acquisition shows mixed results. We investigated three factors in two studies: (1) deep-level vs. shallow-level question generation, (2) self-study vs. peer tutoring, and (3) generating vs. answering deep-level questions for peer tutoring. Study 1 found that generating deep-level questions for peers particularly supports learning. Study 2 showed no significant difference between generating and answering deep-level questions for peer tutoring. Implications for generative learning activities are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Metacognitive skills in text comprehension tasks are fundamental to students’ learning and may vary depending on text genre question type, and educational level. This study examined calibration in 407 students through postdictive judgments and confidence ratings. Three metacognitive indices were calculated: Absolute Accuracy Index, Bias Index, and Discrimination Index. Results suggest that students’ ability to assess their comprehension improves with age and academic experience. Insights for educational practices will be discussed.

ABSTRACT. According to Cognitive Load Theory, element interactivity, that is, the number of interrelated elements that need to be processed simultaneously in working memory, affects text complexity. Two experiments manipulated element interactivity in an expository text based on theories of text comprehension and showed better performance in a knowledge test (Exp. 1) and lower ratings of cognitive load (Exp. 2) for the less interactive (complex) version of the text.

ABSTRACT. This presentation explores how the concept of a sign informs multimodal discourse analysis by attending to the development of specific types of analytical units that have been applied to multimodal discourse analysis in educational settings. The analytical units that are presented focus on base units such as the semiotic resource, sign, and signifier, as well as the ways that these base units are combined to form semiotic complexes, ensembles, syntagms, and other types of arrangements.

ABSTRACT. Early education in source awareness is essential for preparing elementary school students to engage with digital content critically and responsibly because they often lack the critical skills to do so. This study outlines several instructional approaches to enhance source evaluation skills, including providing foundational knowledge, modeling evaluation strategies, offering hands-on practice, and facilitating structured discussions. Implementing these methods, teachers can help students develop the critical thinking abilities required to navigate and assess online information effectively.