In this experiment we investigated whether the presentation of domain principles within one text facilitates reading to learn from multiple exemplar texts that feature the importance of the principles. There were five texts about natural selection: a principles text, which described principles of natural selection, and four exemplar-based texts…

This article documents differences between novice and experienced undergraduate students' processes of reading mathematical proofs as revealed by moment-by-moment, think-aloud protocols. We found three key reading behaviors that describe how novices' reading differed from that of their experienced peers: alternative task models, accrual of…

Background and Aims: In educational measurement, performance assessments occupy a niche for offering a true-to-life format that affords the measurement of high-level cognitive competencies and the evidence to draw inferences about intellectual capital. However, true-to-life formats also introduce myriad complexities and can skew if not outright…

The purpose of this study was to investigate bridging inferences and learning when students with low topic knowledge read multiple complementary biology texts. Using a think-aloud protocol, we assessed students' (n = 74) cognitive processes while they read one text about principles of natural selection and three texts about examples of natural…

Listen-to-summarize cloze (LSC) tasks are not rare in high-stakes language tests; however, we know little about what test-takers do during the tasks. In our study, we examined 16 students' think-aloud protocols (TAPs) which were recorded while they were completing two LSC tasks. The analysis of the 16 TAPs indicated iterative cognitive processes…

Words can be informative linguistic markers of psychological constructs. The purpose of this study is to examine associations between word use and the process of making meaningful connections to a text while reading (i.e., inference generation). To achieve this purpose, think-aloud data from third-fifth grade students (N = 218) reading narrative…

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are gender differences among elementary school-aged students in regard to the inferences they generate during reading. Fourth-grade students (130 females; 126 males) completed think-aloud tasks while reading one practice and one experimental narrative text. Females generated a larger number and a…

Topic interest and learning from texts have been found to be positively associated with each other. However, the reason for this positive association is not well understood. The purpose of this study is to examine a cognitive process, inference generation, that could explain the positive association between interest and learning from texts. In…

Context specificity and the impact that contextual factors have on the complex process of clinical reasoning is poorly understood. Using situated cognition as the theoretical framework, our aim was to evaluate the verbalized clinical reasoning processes of resident physicians in order to describe what impact the presence of contextual factors have…

This qualitative study examines children's comprehension of conventional, wordless, and postmodern picturebooks. The research question was: How do children construct meaning of conventional, wordless, and postmodern picturebooks? More specific questions were: 1) What are the reading strategies that children use as they make sense of…

This exploratory study highlights certain differences in the way an expert and a novice engineer used their analyzing and generating skills while solving a fairly ill-structured design problem. The expert tends to use more inferences and elaboration when solving the design problem and the novice tend to use analysis that is focused on the…

Ainsworth's (2006) DeFT framework posits that different representations may lead learners to use different strategies. We wanted to investigate whether students use different strategies, and more broadly, different cognitive activities in diagrams vs. in running text. In order to do so, we collected think-aloud protocol and other measures from 91…

Rate of change is an important concept for students to study, and little is known about the ways in which secondary students make sense of rate of change. In this qualitative study I examined how four high school students who have not taken calculus reasoned about changing quantities when interacting with mathematical tasks involving multiple…

Because characters' goals play a key role in the structure of narratives, the ability to make inferences about goals is essential to narrative comprehension. Despite their importance, no previous studies have examined the process by which children make these goal inferences. In the current study, we examined 6- and 8-year-old children's goal…

The objective of the present investigation was to compare the adequacy of two cognitive models for predicting examinee performance on a sample of algebra I and II items from the March 2005 administration of the SAT[TM]. The two models included one generated from verbal reports provided by 21 examinees as they solved the SAT[TM] items, and the…