Studying and Using Multiple Documents in History: Effects of Discipline Expertise

Extensive training in history results in generalized knowledge of the methods and information sources typical of history problems, that is, discipline expertise. We investigated the influence of discipline expertise on students' reading, evaluation, and use of multiple documents about a historical controversy. Eleven graduate students in psychology (history novices) and 8 graduate students in history (history specialists) studied 2 controversies about the history of the Panama Canal. For each controversy, the students studied a set of documents, wrote an opinion essay, and evaluated the documents for usefulness and trustworthiness. Study strategies did not differ significantly across groups. However, the evaluation of usefulness varied as a function of document type and students' expertise. Furthermore, novice and expert students differed in the way they expressed and supported an opinion in their essay. We suggest that discipline expertise helps history students connect information sources and interpretations to their representation of the situation or problem.     

The Curse of Expertise: When More Knowledge Leads to Miscalibrated Explanatory Insight

Does expertise within a domain of knowledge predict accurate self‐assessment of the ability to explain topics in that domain? We find that expertise increases confidence in the ability to explain a wide variety of phenomena. However, this confidence is unwarranted; after actually offering full explanations, people are surprised by the limitations in their understanding. For passive expertise (familiar topics), miscalibration is moderated by education; those with more education are accurate in their self‐assessments (Experiment 1). But when those with more education consider topics related to their area of concentrated study (college major), they also display an illusion of understanding (Experiment 2). This “curse of expertise” is explained by a failure to recognize the amount of detailed information that had been forgotten (Experiment 3). While expertise can sometimes lead to accurate self‐knowledge, it can also create illusions of competence.     

The role of naming in stimulus categorization by preschool children

The purpose of the current study was to assess whether children would categorize pictures when taught the relevant listener and speaker behaviors separately. A category-sort test was used to assess emergent conditional relations. Category-sort trials consisted of looking at (Test 1) or tacting/labeling (Test 2) a sample stimulus and selecting the appropriate comparison stimuli. In Experiment 1, 4 children (3-5 years) were taught to tact pictures of six U.S. state maps as either north or south. An assessment was conducted to determine whether they would (1) correctly categorize or sort when presented with a visual sample and (2) select the correct stimuli when hearing their category names (listener behavior). Two of the children categorized the pictures during Posttest 1 after the initial (pairwise) tact training. The other 2 categorized after receiving additional tact training with all pictures presented together. However, one of them categorized only during Posttest 2. In Experiment 2, 4 children (3-5 years) were taught to select pictures when hearing their category names. An assessment was conducted to determine whether they would (1) correctly categorize or sort and (2) tact the stimuli (speaker behavior). One child categorized the pictures during Posttest 1, and two during Posttest 2. The other child required additional training with all pictures grouped together. When participants failed to categorize, they also failed to tact the pictures accurately. Taken together, results from Experiments 1 and 2 show that both speaker and listener behavior play an important role in stimulus categorization.     

Effects of Self-Perception of Reading Skill on Absolute Accuracy of Metacomprehension Judgements

The objective of this study is to investigate the role of self-perception of reading skill as a critical cue for metacomprehension assessment. To achieve our objective, we inspected how self-perception of reading skill explains judgements of reading comprehension and their absolute accuracy. The study results supported our hypotheses: (1) self-perception of reading skill was predictive of metacomprehension predictions even when actual reading skill was controlled for; (2) the extent to which self-perception of reading skill deviated from actual reading skill accounted for the degree to which absolute accuracy of predictions was limited; and (3) more-skilled readers were less likely to overestimate their general reading skill and their reading performance in specific texts than less-skilled readers. However, (4) self-perception of reading skill was more highly related to postdictions than predictions of test performance, which was counter to expectations. We conclude that self-perception of reading skill influences metacomprehension assessments and their absolute accuracy.     

Fast and slow namers: benefits of segmentation and whole word training.

Poor readers in Grade 2 (mean age 7 years 7 months) were categorized into fast and slow namer groups based on their performance on a Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) task. The fast and slow groups were then trained to read words using 3 different training regimes: one that taught onset/rime segmentation, one that taught phonemic segmentation, and one that used whole word repetition. The main results were that the slow namers acquired the words more slowly across experiences than the fast namers, irrespective of training condition, but they were particularly disadvantaged when trained with word-level units. Unlike beginning nonreaders, poor Grade 2 readers showed poorer retention following onset/rime training compared with phoneme or word level training, even when final level of learning was controlled. Further, they showed the best generalization to reading new words and nonwords following phoneme training and the worst following whole word training, even when final level of acquisition was controlled. The data are related to the P. G. Bowers and M. Wolf (1993, Reading and Writing, 5, 69-85) double-deficit hypothesis and to the specific deficits associated with early reading failure.     

Phonological Awareness and Beginning Reading in Spanish-Speaking ESL First Graders: Research into Practice

In the first study, 30 Spanish-speaking English-as-a-second language (ESL) first graders whose families were Latino immigrants and who received all their school instruction in English completed an assessment battery with both Spanish and English measures of phonological awareness, Verbal IQ (VIQ), oral language proficiency, and single-word reading (real words and pseudowords); they also named English alphabet letters. Phonological awareness in Spanish predicted (a) phonological awareness in English and (b) English word reading; thus, phonological awareness may transfer across first and second languages and across oral and written language. English VIQ and oral language proficiency predicted both English and Spanish word reading, but Spanish VIQ and oral language proficiency did not predict English word reading. In the second study, the 4 males and the 4 females with the lowest reading achievement participated in an instructional design experiment in which empirically supported instructional components for teaching beginning reading to monlingual English speakers were included. These components were phonological awareness training (in both Spanish and English), explicit instruction in alphabetic principle (in English), and repeated reading of engaging English text with comprehension monitoring (in English). Both individual students and the group as a whole increased in real-word reading and pseudoword reading beyond the level expected on the basis of their Spanish or English VIQ or oral proficiency. Implications of this research for school psychology practice are discussed, especially the importance of early reading intervention and progress monitoring for Spanish-speaking ESL first graders.     

Two Texts,Three Readers: Distance and Expertise in Reading History

Historians are extraordinary, rather than typical, readers who routinely engage in the self-conscious, directed reading and rereading of historical documents, moving iteratively between documents and their own historical theories about an issue. This study was designed to compare the reading practices of historians reading highly familiar privileged texts with those reading familial but unfamiliar texts, and to determine when and how historians use general historical knowledge versus topic-specific expertise. Two expert historians were asked to select a document critical to their current work and then to read and interpret their own document (close) and a colleague's selection (far). A third historian read the two unfamiliar texts as a control. Our expectations were confirmed: (a) Historians have general document-reading knowledge that includes schemas for identification and interpretation, (b) historians' general knowledge dynamically interacts with their topic-specific expertise, (c) historians read familiar and unfamiliar documents differently, and (d) historians read intertextually. We found evidence that identification is supported by action systems for classification, corroboration, sourcing, and contextualization and that interpretations is supported by action systems for a textual and a historical read. We also saw that historians have strategies for reading a document as text, as artifact, and as member of a set of related texts. Although historians, like all readers, construct textbase and situation models as they read, the manner in which they do so reveals the nature and extent of their expertise. Our task analysis provides an exemplar to contemplate: evidence of how historians actually know and do what we hope students may come to know and do. We conclude with recommendations for how history teachers may engage students in two particularly promising activities: reading across multiple related documents to construct a coherent historical account and the deep analytic reading of a single critical or privileged document.     

学龄早期词语阅读习得对阅读理解能力的预测作用：初始水平和发展速率的贡献

本研究测查了183名儿童在一年级期间（学年初,学年中,学年末）的词语阅读能力（词语解码,阅读流畅性）及一年级末和二年级末的阅读理解能力,采用分层线性模型估计每名儿童在一年级期间词语阅读能力的初始水平和发展速率,以考察二者对阅读理解能力的独立预测作用。结果表明,词语识别的初始水平和增长速率都能独立预测一年级末和二年级末的阅读理解能力,阅读流畅性的初始水平和增长速率只能独立预测二年级末的阅读理解能力,但可以预测阅读理解能力在一年级到二年级的增长。     

Educational consequences of developmental speech disorder: Key Stage 1 National Curriculum assessment results in English and mathematics

Background: Children with speech difficulties may have associated educational problems. This paper reports a study examining the educational attainment of children at Key Stage 1 of the National Curriculum who had previously been identified with a speech difficulty. Aims: (1) To examine the educational attainment at Key Stage 1 of children diagnosed with speech difficulties two/three years prior to the present study. (2) To compare the Key Stage 1 assessment results of children whose speech problems had resolved at the time of assessment with those whose problems persisted. Sample(s): Data were available from 39 children who had an earlier diagnosis of speech difficulties at age 4/5 (from an original cohort of 47) at the age of 7. A control group of 35 children identified and matched at preschool on age, nonverbal ability and gender provided comparative data. Methods: Results of Statutory Assessment Tests (SATs) in reading, reading comprehension, spelling, writing and maths, administered to children at the end of Year 2 of school were analysed. Performance across the two groups was compared. Performance was also compared to published statistics on national levels of attainment. Results: Children with a history of speech difficulties performed less well than controls on reading, spelling and maths. However, children whose speech problems had resolved by the time of assessment performed no differently to controls. Children with persisting speech problems performed less well than controls on tests of literacy and maths. Spelling performance was a particular area of difficulty for children with persisting speech problems.     

Effects of computer-assisted practice on reading and spelling in children with learning disabilities

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the effects of computer-assisted practice on reading and spelling in children with learning disabilities (LD). We compared three practice conditions, one with reading and two with spelling, in order to test whether computer-based reading and spelling practice has an influence on the development of reading and spelling ability in children with LD. A sample was selected of 85 children with LD, with age range between 8 years and 10 years (age, M=111.02, SD=9.6), whose spelling performance was two years below grade level. The participants were randomly assigned to one of four groups: 1) Copy the target word from the computer screen (n=22), 2) Memorize the target word and write it from memory (n=21), 3) Word reading (n=21), and 4) the untrained control group (n=21). We administered measures of pseudoword reading, phonological awareness, phonological word decoding and orthographical word decoding tasks. We examined the learning effects and transfer effects on words classified as a function of length, consistency, and complexity of syllable structure. Overall, the results showed that reading training did not improve spelling; however, the children who participated in the copy training condition improved their spelling skills.     

Influence of auditory-verbal, visual-verbal, visual, and visual-visual processing speed on reading and spelling at the end of Grade 1

This study examined cognitive processing speed through four modalities (auditory-verbal, visual-verbal, visual, and visual-visual) at the end of Grade 1 and how it influences reading and spelling. The subjects were 124 French-speaking children, selected for their contrasting performance on reading and spelling tasks. The children in the first group (N=69) were average readers; the second group of children (N=55) performed worse or much worse on all reading and spelling tasks. The experimental design consisted of a set of 10 tasks administered in two sessions. The major findings reveal that: (1) the children with reading difficulties displayed low and slow performance on most cognitive tasks, whatever the modality; (2) auditory-verbal and visual-verbal processing speed significantly predicted written language, which was not the case with the visual modalities; and (3) that visual problems did not appear to be a potential cause of reading problems in most delayed readers. The findings also confirm the independence of phonological and naming-speed skills in reading development and reading impairment.     

The influence of attentional control on stimulus processing is category specific in Stroop tasks

It is still unclear how attentional control influences stimulus processing. We investigated this issue in four Stroop task experiments utilizing a pretest–training–posttest design. Subjects were given extensive training on the Stroop task using typical incongruent Stroop trials. The rates of color naming and word reading, which reflect the efficiency of stimulus processing, were assessed in pretest and posttest. The difference in rates between posttests and pretests reflects the influence of attentional control, acquired during the training phase, on stimulus processing. In Experiment 1, members of color category were used in the training phase; in Experiment 2, members of color category were used, but not in the training phase; in Experiment 3, they were neither in the color category nor were they used in the training. The results consistently showed that the suppression of word reading and the enhancement of color naming were developed in the training phases and they were not due to general training of color-naming task without conflict but to color-naming training with Stroop conflict (Experiment 4). More importantly, both suppression and enhancement affected the members of color category regardless of whether they were trained or not. The present findings suggest that the influence of attentional control on stimulus processing is category specific. We discuss the implications of the present results in terms of existing research on the locus of attentional control in Stroop tasks.     

Tier 1 and Tier 2 early intervention for handwriting and composing

Three studies evaluated Tier 1 early intervention for handwriting at a critical period for literacy development in first grade and one study evaluated Tier 2 early intervention in the critical period between third and fourth grades for composing on high stakes tests. The results contribute to knowledge of research-supported handwriting and composing instruction that informs practice as school psychologists are empowered to embrace the role of intervention specialist. The first study found that neurodevelopmental training (orthographic-free motor activities and motor-free orthographic activities) led to improved accuracy and legibility of letter formation, but that direct handwriting instruction with visual cues and verbal mediation led to improved automatic handwriting (rate of writing legible letters) and transfer to improved word reading. The second study found that neither motor training nor orthographic training alone added value to direct instruction in automatic letter writing and composing practice in developing handwriting skills, which transferred to improved word reading; but the added motor training did improve performance on a grapho-motor planning task for sequential finger movements that is relevant to composing. A related analysis showed that direct instruction with visual cues and memory delays may reduce reversals. A third study found that adding handwriting to reading instruction improved handwriting but did not add value to reading outcomes for at risk readers; reading instruction alone was beneficial for word reading, decoding, and comprehension. The fourth study showed that comprehensive, explicit instruction in the processes of composition led to more significant improvement, based on group and individual data, than did the regular fourth grade program, on high stakes writing assessment.     

The Effects of Expertise on the Hindsight Bias

We present data from three experiments examining the effects of objective and subjective expertise on the hindsight bias. In Experiment 1, participants read an essay about baseball or dogs and then answered questions about the baseball essay to the best of their ability, as if they had not read the essay, or to the best of their ability, although they read about dogs. Participants also completed a quiz about baseball rules and terminology, which was an objective measure of expertise. Results demonstrated that as participants' baseball expertise increased, their inability to act as if they never read the essay also increased; expertise exacerbated the hindsight bias. To test the effects of subjective expertise on hindsight bias and investigate factors underlying the relationship, participants in Experiment 2 ranked five topics in order of expertise and gave feeling‐of‐knowing (FOK) ratings for questions from these topics. Foresight participants then saw each question again and answered the questions; hindsight participants saw the questions and answers and gave the probability they would have known the answers had they not been provided. Hindsight bias increased with subjective expertise as did average FOK ratings. In Experiment 3, we experimentally manipulated perceived expertise but found that neither average FOK ratings nor hindsight bias was affected by experimentally induced expertise. Taken together, the results demonstrate that expertise exacerbates both objective and subjective hindsight bias but that an FOK, which likely exists only when expertise is naturally acquired, is necessary to engender the detrimental effect of expertise on the hindsight bias. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Teaching reading and spelling: exclusion and stimulus equivalence

In Experiment 1, 7 nonreading children were exposed to a program designed to teach reading of 51 training words. The program featured an exclusion-based procedure in which the children (a) matched printed to dictated words and (b) constructed (copied) printed words with movable letters and named them. All children learned to read the training words. Five children also read generalization words and showed progress in spelling. Experiment 2 applied the program to 4 different children, omitting the word-construction task. They also learned to read the training words, but only 1 participant read generalization words. The data support a stimulus equivalence account of reading acquisition and suggest that reading generalization may be obtained, especially when the teaching program includes word construction.     

Influences of APOE ε4 and expertise on performance of older pilots

Little is known about how APOE ε4-related differences in cognitive performance translate to real-life performance, where training and experience may help to sustain performance. We investigated the influences of APOE ε4 status, expertise (FAA pilot proficiency ratings), and their interaction on longitudinal flight simulator performance. Over a 2-year period, 139 pilots aged 42-69 years were tested annually. APOE ε4 carriers had lower memory performance than noncarriers (p = .019). APOE interacted with Expertise (p = .036), such that the beneficial influence of expertise (p = .013) on longitudinal flight simulator performance was more pronounced for ε4 carriers. Results suggest that relevant training and activity may help sustain middle-aged and older adults' real-world performance, especially among APOE ε4 carriers.     

Tracking the mind during reading via eye movements: comments on Kliegl, Nuthmann, and Engbert (2006)

R. Kliegl, A. Nuthmann, and R. Engbert reported an impressive set of data analyses dealing with the influence of the prior, present, and next word on the duration of the current eye fixation during reading. They argued that outcomes of their regression analyses indicate that lexical processing is distributed across a number of words during reading. The authors of this comment question their conclusions and address 4 different issues: (a) whether there is evidence for distributed lexical processing, (b) whether so-called parafoveal-on-foveal effects are widespread, (c) the role of correlational analyses in reading research, and (d) problems in their analyses because they use only cases in which words are fixated exactly once.     

中学生快速阅读训练的实验研究

本实验以初中学生为被试,围绕着快速阅读训练的作用及其条件问题,进行了两个实验。实验结果如下:(1)对初中学生进行一段时间的快速阅读训练,可以显著提高阅读成绩;(2)难度较大的文章,不适于采用快速阅读;(3)问题-文章的阅读方式在阅读速度、有效读速方面优于文章-问题的阅读方式。     

第二语言阅读“熔断”假说的认知心理证据:在线篇章处理的范式

本研究以认知心理学的结构建造理论为实验框架,模拟学习者母语及外语在线篇章处理的过程,从而获取第二语言阅读"熔断"假说以及"门槛"效应的认知心理证据。英语水平差别显著的高低两组共60名被试参加了英、汉语故事理解加工实验,考察他们如何对故事的人物角色进行持续跟踪,以厘清故事内的"因果链"。结果发现:(1)高水平组成功地把他们的母语故事理解加工能力迁移到第二语言的故事理解加工,而低水平组则迁移失败;(2)理解加工能力的迁移与被试心理表征建构能力以及抑制机制的效率紧密关联,高水平组被试能有效地利用抑制机制来管理他们第二语言的结构建造过程,从而建立对故事的连贯心理表征,而低水平组则不能。在分析上述结果的基础上,文章提出第二语言阅读"熔断"假说的认知心理证据就是第二语言心理表征建构与抑制机制的作用问题;要成功地进行第二语言篇章理解,读者必须要使其二语潜在的能力(如词汇效率等)发展到某个点上,使得与抑制(结构建造的关键)相关的许多无意识的决定过程能够高度自动化。