We examine the role of culture in comprehension. Prominent theories of comprehension conceptualized the outcome of reading as learners' construction of a cognitive representation of texts. We emphasize that such representation reflects not only texts' content, but also individuals' understandings of the real world, as described in texts. We…

The study investigates how learner experience with applications (apps) and how app types (native vs. non-native) influence performance in reading comprehension. Twenty-five high school students used different apps to read four texts. The students were asked to use the annotation feature of the apps to facilitate their reading. Ease of use,…

Engagement during reading can be measured by the amount of time readers invest in the reading process. It is hypothesized that disengagement is marked by a decrease in time investment as compared with the demands made on the reader by the text. In this study, self-paced reading times for screens of text were predicted by a text complexity score…

Examines an avant-garde illustrated book and suggests that "deviant" books urge a kind of reading that gives visibility to the text and seeks out relationships created between two volumes--the book and its words. (DF)

Most studies of eye movement behavior during reading have dealt with the processes involved with local aspects of text, such as visual or graphic characteristics or individual word features. To determine if a global level of processing (pertaining to the whole text or to large sections of it) would affect eye movement patterns differently, a study…

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…