Correction to: The development of dynamic perceptual simulations during sentence comprehension

Cognitive Processing - A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-021-01027-4     

Coherence formation during narrative text processing: a comparison between auditory and audiovisual text presentation in 9- to 12-year-old children

Cognitive Processing - In an experiment with 114 children aged 9–12 years, we compared the ability to establish local and global coherence of narrative texts between auditory and...     

Multi-level mental representations of written,auditory, and audiovisual text in children and adults

We examined whether the comprehension of narrative texts differed between auditory, audiovisual, and written text presentations in a sample of 8- and 10-year-olds and adults. Based on multi-level theories of text comprehension that assume text comprehension to involve at least three levels of mental representation, we applied a sentence recognition task that enabled the separate assessment of the memory of the text surface, text base, and the situation model. Results indicate that 8-year-olds benefit from audiovisual and auditory text presentations in comparison with written text presentations in terms of their memory of situation model information. For 10-year-olds and adults, their text comprehension did not differ between audiovisual, auditory, and written text presentations. Additionally, the mode of text presentation had no effect on the memory of text surface and text base information.     

The Development of Media Sign Literacy—A Longitudinal Study With 4-Year-Old Children

In a longitudinal study, 137 children at the age of 4 years were tested for media sign literacy, intelligence, and several precursors of academically relevant skills, such as phonological awareness and preschool quantity-number competencies. The children were tested four times over two years, measuring the development of these skills every six months. The purpose of the study was to explore whether children’s level of media sign literacy helps them acquire academically relevant symbolic skills like reading and mathematical competencies. The results indicate that media sign literacy as well as intelligence predict mathematical and linguistic competencies. Longitudinal findings indicate that children with higher levels of media sign literacy also achieve higher scores in precursors of mathematical and reading and writing skills, and structural equation modeling revealed a rich interconnectedness between media sign literacy and intelligence. Media sign literacy had a direct and significant effect on mathematical competencies at measurement point 2 and indirect effects on the precursors of reading and writing skills at measurement point 4.     

Children's and Adults’ Ability to Build Online Emotional Inferences During Comprehension of Audiovisual and Auditory Texts

Two studies examined inferences drawn about the protagonist's emotional state in movies (Study 1) or audiobooks (Study 2). Children aged 5, 8, and 10 years old and adults took part. Participants saw or heard 20 movie scenes or sections of audiobooks taken or adapted from the TV show Lassie. An online measure of emotional inference was designed that assessed the ability of the participants to understand the main protagonist's emotional state. The participants’ emotional knowledge and media literacy were assessed as further variables. The results of the studies provide evidence that children from the age of 5 build emotional inferences when both watching movies and listening to audiobooks. A developmental trend exists with regard to the precision of the emotional inferences. Media literacy and emotional knowledge differed in terms of their influence on the ability to generate inferences, which was dependent on the age of the participant and the presentation mode.