The influence of thinking dispositions on integration and recall of multiple texts

We investigated the association between thinking dispositions and two outcomes of multiple-texts comprehension: integration of conflicting information in argumentative essays; and recall of inferential information as an index of deep comprehension. We focused on two thinking dispositions, need for cognition (NFC) and actively open-minded thinking (AOT), as relevant individual differences in the processes involved in multiple-texts comprehension. NFC is the tendency to engage in and enjoy cognitively demanding activities, whereas AOT is the tendency to rationally evaluate arguments and supporting evidence, without being influenced by biases from one's own prior beliefs and prior knowledge. 73 university students completed perceived topic knowledge, perceived exposure to argumentative writing, and perceived competence in argumentative writing, NFC and AOT questionnaires, read two contradictory texts, wrote an argumentative essay, and recalled the information read 1 month later. Argumentative essays were assessed by length and level of integration of conflicting perspective. Text recalls were assessed by number of valid inferences included. Research questions were investigated through a path analysis model. The path analysis model had a good fit. NFC was indirectly associated with argumentation quality of the essay via the essay length. AOT was directly associated with the inferences included in the recall task. The present study contributes to the literature on multiple-texts comprehension by emphasizing the role of thinking dispositions.     

Online Information and Communication Systems to Enhance Health Outcomes Through Communication Convergence

The growing use of digital health communication channels has produced dramatic changes, providing broad access to information for making health decisions and addressing users' emotional needs. Digital health communication channels combine mass and interpersonal communication in different ways. Type 1 convergence occurs sequentially: Individuals obtain health information online that they discuss interpersonally with health providers. Type 2 convergence involves discussions occurring via online health information systems. The effectiveness of these systems depends upon seven communication design and implementation strategies. Emerging interactive health information systems provide customized responses tailored to individuals' specific needs and situations. All these forms of media convergence can improve health education, health promotion, and health behavior change.     

How does parallel language activation affect switch costs during trilingual language comprehension?

ABSTRACT

Declerck, M., Koch, I., Duñabeitia, J., Grainger, J., & Denise, N. [(2019). What absent switch costs and mixing costs during bilingual language comprehension can tell us about language control? Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & Performance.] assumed that the absence of switch costs in bilingual language comprehension may be due to little degree of parallel language activation while substantial degree of it may lead to switch costs. This study tested this assumption by examining the switch costs during Russian-English-Chinese trilinguals’ performing lexical decision tasks in language pairs of L1–L2 in Experiment 1a, L1–L3 in Experiment 1b and L2–L3 in Experiment 1c. We found switch costs in L2 in Experiment 1a and switch costs in both L1 and L3 in Experiment 1b, but no switch costs in both L2 and L3 in Experiment 1c. These results generally provided evidence for the account.     

Predicting Reading Comprehension in Arabic-Speaking Middle Schoolers Using Linguistic Measures

Abstract

This study aimed at examining the contribution of various linguistic components to reading comprehension (RC) in the seventh and ninth grades and to compare this contribution between two groups: children with typical development and those with reading disorders (RD). This was done by testing the relative contribution of phonological awareness, morphological knowledge, vocabulary, and syntactic knowledge to RC in both groups. The regression analysis indicated that the linguistic components explain between 60 and 56% of the variance in RC in the seventh and ninth grades among the typical group and between 74 and 79% in the same grades among those with RD. While phonological awareness and morphological knowledge contribute to RC only among the RD group, the contributions of vocabulary and syntactic knowledge were found to be significant in both groups. The results are discussed in light of previous findings in the literature with theoretical and pedagogical implications.     

The role of executive function in reading comprehension among beginning readers

Empirical evidence supports the importance of executive function (EF) in reading, but the underlying mechanism through which EF contributes to the reading process is unclear. The present study examined the direct and indirect effects of EF on reading comprehension through the indirect pathway of language and cognitive skills (i.e., syntactic awareness and text-connecting inferencing) among the beginning readers. The sample included one hundred and sixty-five 2^nd and 3^rd grade students. The participants were tested on working memory (visuospatial working memory and verbal working memory) and inhibition (prepotent response inhibition and cognitive inhibition), and their syntactic awareness, inference-making, and reading comprehension. The unitary EF construct was obtained by means of confirmatory factor analysis based on the structure of EF in middle childhood suggested in developmental studies. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the direct and indirect effects of EF on the reading outcome. The findings indicated that EF has a direct effect on reading comprehension among the beginning readers. The indirect pathway showed that EF supports the ability to evaluate on grammatical structure of sentences (i.e., syntactic awareness) during reading. However, the indirect effect of EF on reading via inference-making ability is insignificant. The findings highlight the contributions of EF to reading and provide empirical evidence to the hypothetical relation between EF and language skills suggested in DIER (Kim, 2020, Resarch Quarterly, 50, 459). It further extends our knowledge on the roles of EF in the reading process among the beginning readers. Future research directions are implicated as well.     

Interpretation-based processing: a unified theory of semantic sentence comprehension

We present interpretation-based processing—a theory of sentence processing that builds a syntactic and a semantic representation for a sentence and assigns an interpretation to the sentence as soon as possible. That interpretation can further participate in comprehension and in lexical processing and is vital for relating the sentence to the prior discourse. Our theory offers a unified account of the processing of literal sentences, metaphoric sentences, and sentences containing semantic illusions. It also explains how text can prime lexical access. We show that word literality is a matter of degree and that the speed and quality of comprehension depend both on how similar words are to their antecedents in the preceding text and how salient the sentence is with respect to the preceding text. Interpretation-based processing also reconciles superficially contradictory findings about the difference in processing times for metaphors and literals. The theory has been implemented in ACT-R [Anderson and Lebiere, The Atomic Components of Thought, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, Mahwah, NJ, 1998].     

The privileging of ‘Support-From-Below’ in early spatial language acquisition

Spatial terms that encode support (e.g., “on”, in English) are among the first to be understood by children across languages (e.g., Bloom, 1973; Johnston & Slobin, 1979). Such terms apply to a wide variety of support configurations, including Support-From-Below (SFB; cup on table) and Mechanical Support, such as stamps on envelopes, coats on hooks, etc. Research has yet to delineate infants’ semantic space for the term “on” when considering its full range of usage. Do infants initially map “on” to a very broad, highly abstract category – one including cups on tables, stamps on envelopes, etc.? Or do infants begin with a much more restricted interpretation - mapping “on” to certain configurations over others? Much infant cognition research suggests that SFB is an event category that infants learn about early - by five months of age (Baillargeon & DeJong, 2017) - raising the possibility that they may also begin by interpreting the word “on” as referring to configurations like cups on tables, rather than stamps on envelopes. Further, studies examining language production suggests that children and adults map the basic locative expression (BE on, in English) to SFB over Mechanical Support (Landau et al., 2016). We tested the hypothesis that this ‘privileging’ of SFB in early infant cognition and child and adult language also characterizes infants’ language comprehension. Using the Intermodal-Preferential-Looking-Paradigm in combination with infant eye-tracking, 20-month-olds were presented with two support configurations: SFB and Mechanical, Support-Via-Adhesion (henceforth, SVA). Infants preferentially mapped “is on” to SFB (rather than SVA) suggesting that infants differentiate between two quite different kinds of support configurations when mapping spatial language to these two configurations and more so, that SFB is privileged in early language understanding of the English spatial term “on”.