First- and Second-Grade Urban Students' Path to Comprehension Strategy Use: A Practitioner's Framework

This study seeks to explain what first- and second-grade African American, urban students who participated in an explicit comprehension strategy instruction (ECSI) program learned about comprehension strategies and how this knowledge supports self-regulated strategy use. The study was also designed to compare these students' knowledge with those who were exposed to less systematic comprehension strategy instruction. Students who participated in ECSI had more awareness and knowledge of strategies and applied them more frequently than students not in ECSI. A practitioner's framework is proposed to support teachers in developing their own ECSI.     

Assessing reading comprehension with narrative and expository texts: Dimensionality and relationship with fluency,vocabulary and memory

Reading comprehension assessment should rely on valid instruments that enable adequate conclusions to be taken regarding students' reading comprehension performance. In this article, two studies were conducted to collect validity evidence for the vertically scaled forms of two Tests of Reading Comprehension for Portuguese elementary school students in the second to fourth grades, one with narrative texts (TRC‐n) and another with expository ones (TRC‐e). Two samples of 950 and 990 students participated in Study 1, the study of the dimensionality of the TRC‐n and TRC‐e forms, respectively. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence of an acceptable fit for the one‐factor solution for all test forms. Study 2 included 218 students to collect criterion‐related validity. The scores obtained in each of the test forms were significantly correlated with the ones obtained in other reading comprehension measures and with the results obtained in oral reading fluency, vocabulary and working memory tests. Evidence suggests that the test forms are valid measures of reading comprehension.     

Discovery Learning and Discovery Teaching

Sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration are document-level literacy skills that experts routinely use when working with history documents. These are also skills that educators and curricula planners expect students to acquire. We examine high school and college students' current degree of proficiency with these skills and describe our development and evaluation of a computer-based tutoring system designed to teach these skills. We observed that high school and college students who were asked to read multiple documents did not spontaneously attend to source information. Based on analyses of expert and intermediate behavior, we developed the Sourcer's Apprentice, a computer-based tutorial and practice environment for teaching students to source and corroborate while reading history texts. In 3 evaluation studies we found that students who used the Sourcer's Apprentice in place of regular classroom activity or a textbook-centered version of the same content improved at sourcing, contextualization, and corroboration on a transfer test. The Sourcer's Apprentice group also wrote essays on the topic that were more integrated, cited more sources, and referenced more information from primary and secondary sources than the comparison group.     

输入方式对学语前聋生语篇理解的影响：文本和测题类型的调节效应

为了考察信息输入方式、文本类型和测题类型对聋生语篇理解的影响,研究通过录像呈现,以口语、手语、书面语三种输入方式向学语前极重度七、八、九年级聋生呈现叙述性和描述性两种文本类型的语篇信息,并要求其完成理解测试。结果显示：输入方式对聋生语篇理解的效率存在影响,书面语成绩最高且速度最快,依次为手语、口语,文本类型和测题类型对该影响有调节作用。结果表明输入方式是聋生语篇理解的主要影响因素,文本和测题类型是调节因素。     

Examining the Use of Talk and Writing for Students' Development of Scientific Conceptual Knowledge Through Constructing and Critiquing Arguments

This study developed an analytic framework consisting of four patterns of talk and writing that can support students' engagement in construction and critique: Talk only, writing only, use of talk and writing in sequence, and use of talk and writing simultaneously. This study aimed to examine how each pattern supports students' development of scientific knowledge through the construction and critique of arguments and what cognitive functions are associated with each pattern. To trace students' knowledge development over time using the four patterns, three students were selected as target subjects. Data were analyzed using two approaches: (1) in-depth analysis of a Knowledge Development Trajectory and (2) constant comparative method. This study highlights elementary students' capability of engaging in argumentation that promotes their scientific knowledge development when provided with proper opportunities, facilitation, and time to recognize that talk and writing can be used as epistemic tools for both constructing and critiquing arguments.     

Neurological Impress Method PLUS

The purpose of these two studies was to redirect interest to the Neurological Impress Method, a multisensory approach to reading instruction that occurs between a teacher and a student, which has been largely forgotten in mainstream and special education circles over the past decades. In addition to its emphasis on oral reading, we included a comprehension component that we call the plus (+) to NIM Plus. In our first study, third through sixth-grade below-level readers in a San Diego county school participated in NIM tutoring. On each of the three measures—oral reading fluency, silent reading fluency, and comprehension—students performed statistically better after the five-week (3.3 hours) NIM training than they had at the beginning of the training. In oral reading fluency, the students' scores significantly increased from an average of 96.7 words correct per minute to 112 words correct per minute (p < .0001). In silent reading fluency measure, students' scores increased from an average of 132 words per minute to 154 words per minute (p < .002). On the comprehension assessment, students' scores increased from an average of 3.2 questions correct to 4.5 correct (p < .001). In our second study, which was conducted in an urban San Diego school, similar results were found; the students scored significantly higher on all three measures. In this second study, however, we focused on “glimpses” into the reasons why NIM Plus was so effective. The tutors who provided the NIM Plus training reported that NIM Plus helped both teacher and student to focus on prior knowledge, making connections between and among texts and the world, and overall construction of comprehension. Our findings support the idea that the NIM Plus is adaptable and that it requires further investigation, in experimental settings, as well as in schools and clinics.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF STUDENTS' CALIBRATION OF COMPREHENSION AND CALIBRATION OF PERFORMANCE USING MULTIPLE MEASURES

In the present study we examined students' ability to judge comprehension of text material (before actually taking a test) as well as ability to judge comprehension performance on text material (after taking a test). We examined each of these two abilities, termed calibration of comprehension and calibration of performance, by using multiple measures rather than just one as has traditionally been done in the literature. We also examined the role of students' self-assessed monitoring ability and self-image presentation in calibration skills. Results indicated that students were able to calibrate comprehension and performance although calibration levels were low, especially for calibration of comprehension. Students who calibrated comprehension well also tended to calibrate performance well. Several measures used to examine calibration of comprehension were consistent predictors ofperformance as were both quantitative and qualitative measures of calibration of performance. Students' calibration accuracy remained stable across measures and assessment conditions. Although students' self-assessed ability was not related to their actual calibration skills, self-image presentation was related to students'self-assessments and to theirability to calibrate performance. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.     

Presence and place of main ideas and examples in study texts

Background: How indispensable are examples and main ideas in study texts? In research into comprehension of expository texts examples are sometimes considered as cognitive support, sometimes as seductive details. According to the cognitivist view, text comprehension is based on main ideas, whereas the constructivist view holds that examples are the basis of understanding. Aims: This study explored how text comprehension is influenced by main ideas and examples in study texts, in relation to Vermunt's (1992, 1998) ‘concrete elaboration’ learning style. In Experiment 1, concrete texts with many examples were compared with abstract texts with many main ideas. In Experiment 2, idea‐oriented texts, in which main ideas preceded examples, were compared with example‐oriented texts, in which examples preceded main ideas. Samples: In both experiments, undergraduate social sciences students studied various versions of an introductory text on educational psychology. Methods: The text contained sections with a varying number of relevant and irrelevant examples and with or without a main idea (Experiment 1), and sections with a main idea followed by examples, sections with a main idea without examples, or sections with examples followed by a main idea (Experiment 2). After studying the text, students completed a verbatim recognition test and an explanation test. Results: Best results were obtained after studying sections with a main idea and two or five examples. Irrelevant examples were detrimental to understanding. Students used examples to construct knowledge or to activate prior knowledge. Students with a strong habit of concrete elaboration used main ideas to recollect episodes of personal experience. This may interfere with understanding underlying concepts and principles by relating main ideas to examples in the text. Students with a low score on the concrete elaboration scale were sensitive to the presence of examples in the study text. Conclusion: In expository texts, examples are indispensable. The findings suggest that main ideas are useful, and, in order to prevent interference effects, the more so when they are put at the end of sections.     

Source credibility and the processing of refutation texts

The knowledge revision components framework (KReC) outlines the basic comprehension processes and text factors that can be accentuated to increase the potential for knowledge revision during reading. The goal of the present study was to explore source credibility as one such text factor. In Experiment 1, we established the utility of a set of refutation texts in influencing knowledge revision. Participants read ten refutation and ten control texts. The participants had faster reading times and higher posttest scores for the refutation than for the control texts, providing evidence for knowledge revision. In Experiment 2, we examined the influence of source credibility under normal reading conditions. Participants read 20 refutation texts, ten with high-credibility and ten with low-credibility sources. The reading times and posttest scores suggested that knowledge revision unfolded successfully, independent of credibility. Using the same texts, in Experiment 3 we examined the influence of direct instructions that made the credibility of the source of information more salient. When the credibility of the source was made salient, the revision process was disrupted in the low-credibility condition, as evidenced by slower reading times and lower posttest scores than in the high-credibility condition. The results add to our understanding of the factors that constrain knowledge revision during the reading of refutation texts, and are discussed in the context of the extant literature and KReC.     

Fostering reading comprehension in fifth grade by explicit instruction in reading strategies and peer tutoring

Background: Research reveals that explicit reading strategies instruction and engaging students in interaction about texts promote students' reading comprehension ability. The present intervention study combines both aspects. Aims: The study examines the educational benefits of explicit reading strategies instruction, followed by practice in (a) teacher‐led whole‐class activities (STRAT), (b) reciprocal same‐age (STRAT + SA), or (c) cross‐age peer tutoring activities (STRAT + CA) on fifth graders' reading comprehension achievement. Sample: Twenty‐two fifth‐grade teachers and their 454 students from 19 different schools throughout Flanders (Belgium) participated. Method: A quasi‐experimental pretest post‐test retention test design was used with three experimental (STRAT, STRAT + SA, and STRAT + CA) and a matched control group. The experimental interventions were implemented during an entire school year. Results: Multilevel analysis revealed that the STRAT and STRAT + CA condition made a significantly larger pretest to retention test progress than the control group. The significant major progress was especially situated from pretest to post‐test, during which the intervention took place. Concerning the STRAT + SA condition no significant differences with regard to the control group were detected. Pairwise comparisons of the experimental conditions indicated that the STRAT + CA condition's progress from pretest to retention test also exceeded the STRAT + SA condition's advancement significantly. Conclusion: The study corroborated the efficacy of the STRAT and STRAT + CA conditions' interventions as feasible tools to enhance fifth graders' reading comprehension achievement.     

Effects of phonological awareness and morphological awareness on blind students' reading comprehension

The exploration of blind students' reading skills is needed not only for further understanding their reading development but also for providing targeted suggestions for practical education. This study aims to examine the relations among phonological awareness (PA), homograph awareness (HA), compounding awareness (CA) and reading comprehension (RC), and explore the mediating effect of listening comprehension (LC) in Chinese blind students from elementary school. A total of 148 blind and 302 sighted elementary school students completed assessments of PA, HA, CA, LC and RC. The results found that PA, HA and CA were important variables that predicted Chinese blind and sighted students' RC not only directly but also indirectly through LC, which varied across different grades. The findings suggest that there were many similarities that exist in the influencing mechanism of RC between Chinese blind and sighted students.     

The Effects of Text Difficulty on Second Graders' Fluency Development

In this study, two groups of second graders participated in Fluency-Oriented Reading Instruction (FORI) but their repeated reading experiences used different kinds of texts. One group—the Literature group—read texts from the district's literature-based, basal reading program. The second group—the Content group—read from a set of science and social studies texts that were written to have few rare, multisyllabic, single-appearing words. Control-group students read from the district's literature-based program. Both intervention groups made greater gains in reading rate than Control group students and Content students made greater gains in reading rate than Literature students. Content and Literature groups outperformed Control students on the comprehension measure but did not perform significantly differently from one another. The gains made by the Content classrooms were made in approximately half the amount of time allocated to reading instruction as by Literature classrooms.     

Integration of Mitigation,Intention, and Outcome Damage Information,by Students and Circuit Court Judges1

This article examines the problem of how undergraduate students and State Circuit Court Judges combine three specific components of information (pertaining to mitigation, intention, and seriousness of outcome damage) to make a net evaluative judgment of blame. The problem is considered within the framework and philosophy of Anderson's information integration and functional measurement theory. In three experiments, two levels each of the three information components identified were factorially crossed for two independent cases: self-defense under provocation, and altruistic defense of another. Target stimuli consisted of 100-word scenarios each embodying one factorial treatment combination. Experiment 1 used an independent group and Experiment 2 a repeated measures design. Experiment 3 replicated the second experiment using Judges as subjects. It was found that students integrated mitigation, intention, and outcome damage information by an adding process, and that the results concerning these three independent variables were essentially similar for both types of design. The most striking differences between Judges' and students' judgments centered on the differential use of mitigation information. Judges showed a far broader range of nonadditive, simple interaction effects between mitigation and both outcome damage and type of case. These results presumably reflect the primary concerns and responsibilities of the Judiciary. Questions of mitigation may thus complicate the otherwise straightforward additive integration of information in the intent-damage paradigm, and in judgments of seriousness.     

The Effect of Arabic Vowels on the Reading Comprehension of Second- and Sixth-Grade Native Arab Children

This study investigated the effect of Arabic vowels on the reading comprehension of native Arabic speakers. This issue has not been addressed yet. Two groups of native Arabic speakers were randomly sampled, one from two elementary schools in the Haifa area, and the other from two elementary schools in Nazareth. Both groups in both experiments read Arabic texts in two reading conditions, vowelized and unvowelized; the older group (n= 74) answered 10 multiple-choice comprehension questions about each story, and the younger group (n= 71) answered seven multiple-choice comprehension questions. The results revealed that vowels were a significant facilitator of reading comprehension in both age groups. Considering these results, reading in Arabic orthography is not an autonomous word recognition process. An alternative approach is suggested for reading Arabic.     

When a product takes on characteristics of the person who created it: Sometimes it sounds sweeter

We investigated when consumers' judgments about a product reflect information about its product source (the person who creates the product). Three experiments manipulated congruence between the source's gender and the gender-typing of the source's product. When congruent with expectations (a male conductor played male-typed music), pre-trial source information had the same effect on post-trial product judgments as when source information was absent. Incongruence (a female conductor played male-typed music) distorted product attribute judgments when the source's competence was questioned. Her music was judged to be more delicate, less powerful and worse quality than his. This process of product experience being assimilated into incompetence stereotypes required minimal cognitive resources. When the incongruent source was undoubtedly competent, the amount of experiential evidence about an attribute influenced distortion. Consumers judged powerful music as powerful regardless of conductor gender, but, lacking much evidence about its delicacy, judged hers as more delicate than his. The selective effect of source gender information reflects consumers' cognitively effortful hypothesis testing of beliefs that gender expresses itself in a person's output against experiential evidence.     

Investigating Two Approaches to Fostering Children's Comprehension of Literature

This instructional study investigated the effects of two approaches to fostering elementary students' comprehension of literature. Participants were 54 third-grade students in 2 classrooms in a linguistic and culturally diverse, urban elementary school. Students read two folktales, receiving a Scaffolded Reading Experience (SRE) unit with one folktale and a unit we termed a Response-Oriented approach with the other folktale in a counterbalanced fashion. Classes were observed throughout both units and students completed multiple-choice and short-answer tests after reading each story and receiving the unit instruction. Teachers were interviewed after presenting both units. Results on the multiple-choice tests showed that students scored significantly higher when receiving the SRE units and that teachers preferred the SRE unit lessons. However, there were no differences between the two approaches on the short-answer tests, and teachers noted that some of the activities in the Response-Oriented units were very useful. Our conclusions are that both the Response-Oriented units and the SRE units provided strong scaffolding for students' reading, that the two approaches should be thought of as complementary rather than as competing, and that there is a place for both of them in classrooms that seek to build both comprehension and appreciation of literature.     

ELEMENTARY TEACHERS' BELIEFS ABOUT READING AND KNOWLEDGE OF READING CONTENT: RELATIONSHIPS TO DECISION ABOUT READING OUTCOMES

Relationships between elementary teachers' beliefs about reading, knowledge of basic reading content, and decisions about the importance of students' reading behavior in relation to grade level were examined. Significant correlation coefficients were found for (1) knowledge of reading and reading behavior outcomes focusing on discrimination of sounds represented by consonants and consonant clusters and (2) student‐centered reading beliefs and reading behavior outcomes associated with making conclusions and drawing inferences about stories read. Significant negative correlations were noted for (1) knowledge of reading and outcomes dealing with comprehension of explicitly stated meaning and details in reading passages and (2) student‐centered reading beliefs and all reading outcomes focusing on basic decoding skills and literal comprehension of story information. The best predictor of teachers' identification of important reading behavior outcomes was knowledge of reading content. Reading behavior outcomes differed significantly between primary and intermediate level teachers for recognition of sounds represented by vowels; intermediate teachers gave these higher rankings than did primary teachers. The results indicate that beliefs about reading influence elementary teachers' decisions about the importance of reading outcomes typically taught in the elementary grades. Teachers who hold student‐centered reading beliefs are not likely to value instruction that focuses on decoding.     

Learning from Conflicting Texts: The Role of Intertextual Conflict Resolution in Between-Text Integration

The present study examined the effect of intertextual conflict resolution on learning from conflicting texts. In two experiments, participants read sets of two texts under the condition of being encouraged either to resolve a conflict between the texts' arguments (the resolution condition) or to comprehend the arguments (the comprehension condition). Experiment 1 found that participants in the resolution condition surpassed participants in the comprehension condition at the understanding of the controversial subjects and succeeded in the understanding of the intertextual relationships. Experiment 2 found that participants in the resolution condition recalled compatible and incompatible information from the texts more than did participants in the comprehension condition. The recalled information from one text was also positively correlated with that from the opposite text. These results suggest that intertextual conflict resolution facilitates successful integration of conflicting arguments in texts in terms of the documents model framework (e.g., Britt & Rouet, 2012).     

Sixth-Grade Students' Epistemologies of Science: The Impact of School Science Experiences on Epistemological Development

Previous studies have documented that middle school students have a limited "knowledge unproblematic" epistemology of science (i.e., scientists steadily amass more facts about the world by doing experiments) with no appreciation of the role played by scientists' ideas in guiding inquiry. An important question concerns to what extent students this age and younger are ready to restructure their epistemological views to focus on more "constructivist" issues: the conjectural, explanatory, testable, and revisable nature of theories. This study tests the claim that even elementary school students can make significant progress in developing a more sophisticated, constructivist epistemology of science, given a sustained elementary school science curriculum that is designed to support students' thinking about epistemological issues. To assess the impact of elementary science experiences on students' epistemological views, 2 demographically similar groups of 6th-grade students were individually interviewed using the Nature of Science Interview developed by Carey and colleagues (Carey, 1991; Carey, Evans, Honda, Jay, & Unger, 1989). Both groups had experienced sustained elementary science instruction; 1 taught from a constructivist perspective and 1 taught from a more traditional perspective. We found that students in the more traditional science classroom had developed a knowledge unproblematic epistemology of the type previously reported by Carey et al. (1989). In contrast, students in the constructivist classroom had developed an epistemological stance toward science that focused on the central role of ideas in the knowledge acquisition process and on the kinds of mental, social, and experimental work involved in understanding, developing, testing, and revising these ideas. We conclude that elementary schoolchildren are more ready to formulate sophisticated epistemological views than many have thought. We discuss how these findings relate to the broader epistemological literature, and the features of the constructivist classroom environment that may have supported the development of these sophisticated understandings.     

The effects of prior knowledge and text structure on comprehension processes during reading of scientific texts

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effects of prior knowledge and text structure on cognitive processes during comprehension of scientific texts. To investigate the processes online, we used a think-aloud methodology in Experiment 1 and a reading time methodology in Experiment 2. In both experiments, we obtained offline comprehension measures and measures of individual differences in working memory and need for cognition. Across the two experiments, the results indicated that readers adjust their processing as a function of the interaction between prior knowledge and text structure. In particular, adjustments in theactual processes that take place during reading were observed for readers who had erroneous prior knowledge,but only when they read a text that was structured to explicitly refute this prior knowledge. Furthermore, the results showed that readers' memory for the text was affected by differences in their prior knowledge, independently of text structure. These findings contribute to our understanding of the relation between different factorsthat are associated with comprehension of scientific texts and have implications for theories of comprehension and conceptual change.