The comprehension of connectives is crucial for understanding the discourse relations that make up a text. We studied connective comprehension in English to investigate whether adult comprehenders acquire the meaning and intended use of connectives to a similar extent and how connective features and individual differences impact connective…

Reading is a fascinating cognitive process through which individuals perceive arbitrary symbols on a page and turn them into vivid mental representations of text. Most available evidence supports an embodied explanation for how readers are capable of such representations--they recruit supralinguistic brain regions in order to mentally simulate the…

Describing the processes of metaphor comprehension has been a hot topic of discussion among researchers throughout the past four decades. One of the major challenges has been to find a mechanism that can describe the processes involved in the comprehension of various kinds of metaphors. This article suggests that different types of metaphors could…

In this paper, I apply the Multiple Documents Text-Based Relevance Assessment and Content Extraction (MD-TRACE) model, to describe the types of cognitive processes that students engage to critically reason about social issues, as they are portrayed through mass media. In addition to examining such processes, I further consider the extent to which…

Learning from expository science texts is challenging. These studies explore whether difficulties can be attributed to poor memory or poor reasoning. To eliminate the need for memory during testing, some students took the tests with the texts available. To test for the effects of reasoning on performance, some students were prompted to engage in…

Inequality in reading outcomes is perhaps the single greatest social justice issue faced by school psychologists, and school psychologists need a better understanding of reading theory and its application to intervention to better combat the important issue. The present study examined the active view of reading (AVR; Duke & Cartwright, 2021),…

Scientific reasoning refers to the thinking skills involved in conceiving and conducting an investigation. This study examined how proficiency in performing these skills develops during the upper-elementary school years. A sample of 157 children (age 7-10) took a performance-based scientific reasoning test in three consecutive years. Four distinct…

The Abstract Conceptual Feature (ACF) framework predicts that word meaning is represented within a high-dimensional semantic space bounded by weighted contributions of perceptual, affective, and encyclopedic information. The ACF, like latent semantic analysis, is amenable to distance metrics between any two words. We applied predictions of the ACF…

We present the results of a qualitative research study designed to explore differences in the types of reasoning triggered by information presented to chemistry students in two different formats. One group of students was asked to analyze a sequence of images designed to represent critical elements in the explanation of a target phenomenon.…

Reasoning, our ability to solve novel problems, has been shown to improve as a result of learning experiences. However, the underlying mechanisms of change in this high-level cognitive ability are unclear. We hypothesized that possible mechanisms include improvements in the encoding, maintenance, and/or integration of relations among mental…

It is commonly accepted in the academy that developing a critical thinking capacity and related capabilities will make students more effective thinkers and writers, and that these are desirable traits for graduates to have no matter what path they take after graduation. While most academics agree that critical thinking is an essential component of…

Detecting a pattern within a sequence of ordered units, defined as patterning, is a cognitive ability that is important in learning mathematics and influential in learning to read. The present study was designed to examine relations between first-grade children's executive functions, patterning, and reading abilities, and to examine whether these…

This study examines differences in English language comprehension, reading fluency, and executive functions among Spanish-English bilinguals with reading difficulties. Reading difficulties examined included general reading difficulties, defined by low word reading and reading comprehension, and specific-reading comprehension difficulties, defined…

This study examines differences in English language comprehension, reading fluency, and executive functions among Spanish-English bilinguals with reading difficulties. Reading difficulties examined included general reading difficulties, defined by low word reading and reading comprehension, and specific-reading comprehension difficulties, defined…

The present research aims to assess literacy acquisition in children becoming bilingual via second language immersion in school. We adopt a cognitive components approach, assessing text-level reading comprehension, a complex literacy skill, as well as underlying cognitive and linguistic components in 144 children aged 7 to 14 (72 immersion…