On-line story representation in boys with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) face an increased risk of poor achievement in school. Thus, knowledge of the cognitive processing abilities of children with ADHD is critical to understanding and improving their academic performance. Although many studies have focused on the specific nature of the attention deficit experienced by children with ADHD, few have examined higher order cognitive processing such as comprehension of stories. The present study examined the processes of encoding story information, building a story representation, and modifying a story representation in boys with ADHD and nonreferred boys. Boys were asked to narrate a story from a picture book twice. Boys with ADHD showed deficits in representing goals and goal plans in their narrations, as compared to nonreferred boys. Boys with ADHD also committed more errors than nonreferred boys, but did correct certain types of errors on their second telling. Implications are discussed in terms of future research needed to identify the cognitive deficits that account for these narrative deficits.     

Story Comprehension in Children with ADHD

A wealth of research is available examining children's story comprehension. However, little attention has been directed toward understanding the story comprehension of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The present paper attempts to integrate the developmental literature on children's story comprehension with the little that is known about the story comprehension processes of children with ADHD. This review is guided by a network model of story representation that emphasizes the structure of causal and enabling relations between story events. Examination of the available studies indicates that children with ADHD lag behind their peers in their understanding of causal relations, and that their attentional problems may contribute to difficulties in understanding factual information in the preschool years and causally related information in the elementary years. Some evidence also is presented suggesting that children with ADHD are less effective in taking advantage of story structure features in guiding their recall of story events. Suggestions for future research are offered that would elaborate our knowledge of the developmental progression in the processing of complex information by children with ADHD.     

What Eye Movements Reveal About Later Comprehension of Long Connected Texts

We know that reading involves coordination between textual characteristics and visual attention, but research linking eye movements during reading and comprehension assessed after reading is surprisingly limited, especially for reading long connected texts. We tested two competing possibilities: (a) the weak association hypothesis: Links between eye movements and comprehension are weak and short-lived, versus (b) the strong association hypothesis: The two are robustly linked, even after a delay. Using a predictive modeling approach, we trained regression models to predict comprehension scores from global eye movement features, using participant-level cross-validation to ensure that the models generalize across participants. We used data from three studies in which readers (Ns = 104, 130, 147) answered multiple-choice comprehension questions ~30 min after reading a 6,500-word text, or after reading up to eight 1,000-word texts. The models generated accurate predictions of participants' text comprehension scores (correlations between observed and predicted comprehension: 0.384, 0.362, 0.372, ps < .001), in line with the strong association hypothesis. We found that making more, but shorter fixations, consistently predicted comprehension across all studies. Furthermore, models trained on one study's data could successfully predict comprehension on the others, suggesting generalizability across studies. Collectively, these findings suggest that there is a robust link between eye movements and subsequent comprehension of a long connected text, thereby connecting theories of low-level eye movements with those of higher order text processing during reading.     

识字量和词汇知识在儿童阅读发展中的相对重要性

本研究基于简单阅读观理论,以两个样本共计666名大班至四年级的汉语儿童为研究对象,探索了识字量和词汇知识在儿童阅读能力发展中的作用及相对重要性的变化。结果显示,在阅读学习早期,识字量对阅读理解的重要性高于词汇知识。随着年级的升高,识字量的重要性降低,而词汇知识的重要性增加。这一发现证实简单阅读观理论也适用于解释汉语阅读能力的发展,并对今后的语文教学具有重要的启示意义。     

Individual differences in sentence memory

Results from an experiment with two parts are presented in this paper. In part one, participants listened to sentences containing two, three, four, or five clauses, and were asked questions about the content of the sentences. The results of part one demonstrate that an important unit of representation in sentence memory is the clause, and not some other component of discourse structure. In part two, the same group of participants performed eight different short-term storage/working memory tasks. A composite complex span score was computed for each participant based on three working memory tasks closely based on Daneman & Carpenter's (1980) reading span task. This working memory measure was significantly correlated with the participants' performance on the sentence memory task in part one. A second working memory measure—N-back—was also significantly correlated with the participants' performance on the sentence memory task, and there was no correlation between their performance on the complex span task and the N-back task. It is therefore concluded that (i) working memory consists of a number of dissociable components; and (ii) memory for sentences taps into more than one of these working memory components. Furthermore, the high correlations of sentence memory with the complex span and the N-back tasks (neither of which are language processing tasks) suggests that memory for sentences is not simply a result of linguistic experience; rather, it is likely that an independent working memory component contributes to participants' performance on the sentence memory task.     

Eye movements and spoken language comprehension: effects of visual context on syntactic ambiguity resolution

When participants follow spoken instructions to pick up and move objects in a visual workspace, their eye movements to the objects are closely time-locked to referential expressions in the instructions. Two experiments used this methodology to investigate the processing of the temporary ambiguities that arise because spoken language unfolds over time. Experiment 1 examined the processing of sentences with a temporarily ambiguous prepositional phrase (e.g., "Put the apple on the towel in the box") using visual contexts that supported either the normally preferred initial interpretation (the apple should be put on the towel) or the less-preferred interpretation (the apple is already on the towel and should be put in the box). Eye movement patterns clearly established that the initial interpretation of the ambiguous phrase was the one consistent with the context. Experiment 2 replicated these results using prerecorded digitized speech to eliminate any possibility of prosodic differences across conditions or experimenter demand. Overall, the findings are consistent with a broad theoretical framework in which real-time language comprehension immediately takes into account a rich array of relevant nonlinguistic context.     

比喻性成语对文章段落回忆的影响

本研究采用随意学习的实验范式,探讨了结句中是否包含比喻性成语以及被试的工作记忆容量大小对文章段落回忆成绩的影响.实验中所有被试被要求阅读6个说明体的文章段落,然后接受一个有提示的回忆测验.研究发现(1)所有被试对结句中包含比喻性成语的段落回忆成绩比结句中没有比喻性成语的段落好.(2)结句中是否包含比喻性成语和被试工作记忆容量之间存在着交互作用.若结句中包含比喻性成语,段落的回忆成绩不受被试工作记忆容量的制约,反之则会.这些结果可能表明,比喻性成语的某些特点,如形象性或易记性,作为一种辅助手段促进了被试对文章内容的记忆、保持和回忆.     

Familial Handedness and Access to Words, Meaning, and Syntax during Sentence Comprehension

We compared right-handed familial dextral (FS-) and familial sinistral (FS+) participants who were aged either 10-13 years (children) or 18-23 years (adults). In word probe and associative probe tasks, FS+ adults responded faster than all other groups and FS+ children responded more slowly than all other groups. In the word probe task, only the FS- adults showed a significant effect of the serial position of the target word. We interpret these differences to support an analysis-by-synthesis model of comprehension in which individuals who differ in familial handedness and age emphasize different linguistic representations during comprehension. In general, FS+ individuals focus on words and meaning, while FS- individuals focus on syntactic representations. In FS+ individuals, age-related experiences with language produce a shift in responding from compositional meaning to words and their associations. In FS- individuals, age-related experiences with language produce a shift toward responding based more on detailed syntactic representations, including the serial order of words and possibly the structural roles of clauses.     

关于小学四年级至初中一年级学生阅读理解能力的研究

本研究从一般性阅读理解的角度．对738名小学四年级至初中一年级学生的阅读理解能力进行研究,得出由七种成分构成的阅读理解能力结构,并初步探讨了各年级学生以及不同阅读理解能力学生的发展特点。     

理解评估与成绩预测：两种不同的元理解监测形式

探讨理解评估与成绩预测与各种强化元理解监测线索的认知任务的关系。结果发现,理解评估与成绩预测的判断值偏离标准测验成绩的程度受监测线索强化方式的调节;主动强化监测线索比被动强化更能提高理解评估和成绩预测的精确性;精确的理解评估或成绩预测所需的线索不同,利用同一线索评估理解或预测成绩,其精确性也不同。这一结果挑战了元理解监测的一维观,表明理解评估与成绩预测涵盖了元理解监测不同方面的心理特征