This article presents 34 characteristics of texts and tasks ("text features") that can make continuous (prose), noncontinuous (document), and quantitative texts easier or more difficult for adolescents and adults to comprehend and use. The text features were identified by examining the assessment tasks and associated texts in the national…

A widespread theoretical assumption is that many processes involved in text comprehension are automatic, with automaticity typically defined in terms of properties (e.g., speed, effort). In contrast, the authors advocate for conceptualization of automaticity in terms of underlying cognitive mechanisms and evaluate one prominent account, the…

Purpose: This article addresses sentence comprehension as a requirement of reading comprehension within the framework of the narrow view of reading that was advocated in the prologue to this forum. The focus is on the comprehension requirements of complex sentences, which are characteristic of school texts. Method: Topics included in this…

Effects of topic headings on the processing of multiple-topic expository texts were examined with the help of readers' eye fixation patterns. Adult participants read two texts, one in which topic shifts were signaled by topic headings and one in which topic headings were excluded. The presence of topic headings facilitated the processing of topic…

This experiment employed the boundary paradigm during sentence reading to explore the nature of early phonological coding in reading. Fixation durations were shorter when the parafoveal preview was the correct word than when it was a spelling control pseudoword. In contrast, there was no significant difference between correct word and…

Text rendering is a method of deconstructing text that allows students to make decisions regarding the importance of the text, select the portions that are most meaningful to them, and then share it with classmates--all without fear of being ridiculed. The research on students constructing meaning from text is clear. In order for knowledge to…

The typical college student is unable to deeply comprehend what he or she reads. Most students have few, if any, intellectual tools that would enable them to read deeply, and then apply what they have read. The "Critical Thinking and the Art of Close Reading" series (which includes this column and the past three columns) focuses on some of the…