This study investigated whether presenting a picture before reading can encourage situation-model construction. We compared two conditions (n = 30) which differed in whether a picture of the initial situation described in a narrative text was presented before reading (i.e. pictorial-support condition) or not (i.e. no-picture condition).…

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 present study examined individual differences in the processing of different forms of figurative language. Sixty participants read sarcastic, metaphorical, and literal sentences embedded in story contexts while their eye movements were recorded, and responded to a text memory and an inference question after each story. Individual differences…

Comprehension strategy instruction has been widely studied in the past 10 years. We now know that students who actively engage and interact with text using particular cognitive strategies are more likely to understand and remember more of what they have read. Students who use these strategies are able to access knowledge that is outside the realm…

In this article, Boldt considers decisions teachers must make about the value of children's writing as a form of play in primary classrooms. She offers a brief history of the framing of this question at 1966 Dartmouth Conference on English, focusing particularly on the perspective of Jimmy Britton. She highlights the relationship between Britton's…

Listening to students in productive ways seems to be at the core of teaching practices aligned with the basic tenets of the constructivist world view. We present a definition for productive ways of listening, discuss the challenges involved in implementing it, and propose a way to support the "decentering" needed to learning to listen for teacher…

Suggests two models of how readers create bridging inferences to resolve signals to textual cohesion. Evaluates reading times, verification accuracy, verification latency, and regressive eye fixations to support the model which views bridges as the result of a form of deduction in which the reader tacitly establishes premises that provide rational…

According to current psychological models of deduction, people can draw inferences on the basis of information that they receive from different sources at different times. In 3 reading-comprehension experiments, the authors demonstrated that premises that appear far apart in a text (distant) are not accessed and are therefore not used as a basis…

Offers a metacognitive strategy for helping students answer inferential comprehension questions and a research-based rationale for its use. (FL)

Reading comprehension instruction in many classrooms focuses on teacher-generated questions which actually measure comprehension of specific text rather than developing metacognitive strategies for comprehending all text. Explicit instruction in the metacognitive strategies of making text connections, predicting, and sequencing, was evaluated for…

Indicates that adding large amounts of supportive information to basal reader stories increased children's story understanding and enhanced their interest in the stories, but had no effect on reading rate or the amount of important information included in story retellings. (FL)

Compares inferences about story characters' behavior, perceptions, and goals made by eighth graders, eleventh graders, college freshmen, and college seniors. Concludes that from early adolescence to young adulthood, readers shift from conceptions of characters in terms of immediate surface feelings and behaviors to conceptions in terms of…