Background: Digital texts are progressively becoming the medium of learning for students, but research has indicated that students tend to process information more superficially while reading on screen. It is therefore relevant to examine what strategies can support digital text comprehension. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the…

Assessing text quality as an indication of underlying skills still remains challenging; irrespective of the approach, many studies struggle with reliability or validity problems. If writing is considered problem-solving, a report must make the reader understand the described situation and call for its mental reconstruction. Therefore, text quality…

Background: During digital reading on internet-connected devices, students may be exposed to a variety of on-screen distractions. Learning by reading can therefore become a fragmented experience with potentially negative consequences for reading processes and outcomes. Objectives: This study investigated the effects of on-screen distractions, as…

Reading academic hypertext documents in college brings a new level of complexity that changes the definition of college reading and literacy. Knowing how to read these unpredictable, nonlinear texts requires familiarity and practice. The author describes the nature and usefulness of hypertext, reviews the challenges of reading hypertext, and…

Previous research on the redundancy principle in multimedia learning has shown that although exact correspondence between on-screen text and narration generally impairs learning, brief labels within an animation can improve learning. To clarify and extend the theoretical and practical implications of these results, the authors of the present…

It is possible that e-textbook readers and tablet PC's will become mainstream reading devices in the future. However, knowledge about instructional design in this field of learning sciences is inadequate. This study aimed to analyse how two factors, that is, presentation methods and concept maps, interact with cognitive load and learning…

This study examined whether reading a refutational or non-refutational text would induce different cognitive processing, as revealed by eye-movement analyses. Unlike a standard expository text, a refutational text acknowledges a reader's alternative conceptions about a topic, refutes them, and then introduces scientific conceptions as viable…

Plagiarism may result from faulty cognitive processing and thereby be unintentional (Marsh, Landau, & Hicks, 1997). The current study tested the effectiveness of paraphrasing training designed to prevent unintentional plagiarism. Thirty-six students enrolled in research methods participated, one group received paraphrasing training; a control…

Two experiments with 188 college students investigated the facilitative effect of typographical signals such as underlining, headings, or other devices to help readers identify specific points. Results do not support a general facilitative effect of typographical signals but suggest that use of signals depends on the reader's strategic processing.…

To examine the effectiveness of various writing devices, a study used Richard Carter's Signalled Stopping Technique (SST) to compare these devices as used in two student-authored science stories. The SST indicates how messages are mentally processed, and uses the following seven stops: (1) C (confusion); (2) R (reread); (3) Q (question); (4) T…

Describes strategies to facilitate college students learning from scientific journal articles. Builds upon a variant of SQ3R as a basic strategy and utilizes a cognitive strategy instruction (CSI) model for sequencing instruction. (NH)

Examines the effects of specific task-related information on undergraduates' studying behaviors and question-answering performance and indicates that specific postreading response criteria significantly improved the question-answering performance of readers.(DF)

Advocates teaching developmental students to apply the schemata they unconsciously use when choosing movies or television programs to select recreational books. Reviews six steps in surveying/previewing recreational books and three stages of diminishing teacher involvement in book selection. (DMM)

Eighty college students read textbook passages that either included marginal inserts to signal key concepts or did not include these inserts. Signaling key concepts enhanced performance on content quizzes overall and on subsets of items assessing signaled material. Performance was not affected on subsets of items for nonsignaled content. Students…

Forty-eight college students participated in a study that (1) explored the degree to which the reader response technique developed by W. F. Brewer and E. H. Lichtenstein to study artificial texts could be applied to natural texts, and (2) compared texts written over a wide time period and from two different literary traditions (six American and…