The present article aims to estimate the value of language learning through a quick review of the learning process and with a focus on "accumulated knowledge" and "the ability to learn." Following the opinions of researchers and linguists, we can also argue that the whole history of human culture--"of intelligence and…

Previous work on individual differences has revealed limitations in the ability of existing measures (e.g., working memory) to predict language processing. Recent evidence suggests that an individual's sensitivity to detect the statistical regularities present in language (i.e., "chunk sensitivity") may significantly modulate online…

The study of word-to-text integration (WTI) provides a window on incremental processes that link the meaning of a word to the preceding text. We review a research program using event-related potential indicators of WTI at sentence beginnings, thus localizing sources of integration to prior text meaning independently of the current sentence. The…

A substantial amount of research has focused on children's reading development and reading problems, but in comparison there has been relatively little research into children's reading comprehension. This article provides an overview of the research that has investigated the skills and cognitive processes that support children's understanding of…

In our commentary on this excellent set of articles on "Sourcing in the Reading Process," we endeavor to synthesize the findings from the seven articles and discuss future research. We discuss significant contributions related to source memory, source evaluation, use of sources in action and belief, integration of information from…

With the increasing educational and institutional legitimacy afforded to multimodal texts, there is a need to further explore the use of the visual and its place in reader response, not only as a textual means to prompt interpretation but also as a form of interpretation itself. In this paper, I look at the multimodal interpretive practices of one…

Reading-related skills of youth with intellectual disability (ID) were compared with those of typically developing (TD) children of similar verbal ability level. The group with ID scored lower than the TD group on word recognition and phonological decoding, but similarly on orthographic processing and rapid automatized naming (RAN). Further,…

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate how relevance instructions influence readers' personal reading intentions, reading goals, text processing, and memory for text. Undergraduates (n = 52) were randomly assigned to one of three pre-reading relevance instruction conditions that asked them to read from a perspective or to read…

Background music has been found to have beneficial, detrimental, or no effect on a variety of behavioral and psychological outcome measures. This article reports a meta-analysis that attempts to summarize the impact of background music. A global analysis shows a null effect, but a detailed examination of the studies that allow the calculation of…

Recent research has suggested that reading involves the mental simulation of events and actions described in a text. It is possible however that previous findings did not tap into processes engaged during natural reading but rather those triggered by task demands. The present study examined whether readers spontaneously mentally simulate the…

The present study focussed on the determinants for effective solving of the Wordchains Test (WCT) in a normative sample of Norwegian junior high-school students. Forty voluntary participants from a rural school district in Western Norway completed the WCT along with tests of general intellectual capacity, single word and non-word reading, auditory…

We analyze the timing of recall as a source of information about children's performance in complex working memory tasks. A group of 8-year-olds performed a traditional operation span task in which sequence length increased across trials and an operation period task in which processing requirements were extended across trials of constant sequence…

Working-memory capacity, strategy instruction, and timing of estimates were investigated for their effects on absolute monitoring accuracy, which is the difference between estimated and actual reading comprehension test performance. Participants read two expository texts under one of two randomly assigned reading strategy instruction conditions…

This study examines the effect of incentives, a motivational manipulation, on cognitive processes of reading. Extrinsic motivation was manipulated through the use of monetary incentives to assess its effect on information processing in reading. One group of college students was paid for what they remembered from several narrative passages they…

The present study investigates the relation between spatial ability and visuo-spatial and verbal working memory in spatial text processing. In two experiments, participants listened to a spatial text (Experiments 1 and 2) and a non-spatial text (Experiment 1), at the same time performing a spatial or a verbal concurrent task, or no secondary task.…