The present research aims to assess literacy acquisition in children becoming bilingual via second language immersion in school. We adopt a cognitive components approach, assessing text-level reading comprehension, a complex literacy skill, as well as underlying cognitive and linguistic components in 144 children aged 7 to 14 (72 immersion…

The main goal of this study was to investigate how readers' visual attention distribution during reading of conflicting science information is related to their scientific reasoning behavior. A total of 25 university students voluntarily participated in the study. They were given conflicting science information about earthquake predictions to read…

Semantic and lexical decision tasks were used to investigate the mechanisms underlying code-blend facilitation: the finding that hearing bimodal bilinguals comprehend signs in American Sign Language (ASL) and spoken English words more quickly when they are presented together simultaneously than when each is presented alone. More robust…

The relationship between knowledge and literacy is a central concern for all teachers. In his teaching, Palek noted that his students were struggling to understand complex substantive concepts such as "parliament" and decided to explore the relationship between students' understanding of a concept and their wider substantive knowledge…

Gender differences in reading development are a global phenomenon, with girls typically performing better than boys. Some studies have reported gender differences favouring girls in reading comprehension in South Africa, but little systematic evidence exists about gender differences in the cognitive-linguistic abilities that underlie reading…

From a social semiotic perspective, image designs in science textbooks are inevitably influenced by the sociocultural context in which the books are produced. The learning environments of Australia and Taiwan vary greatly. Drawing on social semiotics and cognitive science, this study compares classificational images in Australian and Taiwanese…

This study aimed to (a) explore the roles of cognitive and language variables in predicting reading abilities of two groups of individuals with reading disabilities (i.e., dyslexia and specific language impairment) and (b) examine which variable(s) is the most predictive in differentiating two groups. Inclusion/exclusion criteria applied to…

For accurate reading comprehension, readers must first learn to map letters to their corresponding speech sounds and meaning, and then they must string the meanings of many words together to form a representation of the text. Furthermore, readers must master the complexities involved in parsing the relevant syntactic and pragmatic information…

Purpose: This study investigated the comprehension of counterfactual conditionals in monolingual Turkish children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. Comprehending counterfactuals requires a well-developed cognitive system (Beck, Riggs, & Gorniak, 2009). Children with SLI have impaired cognitive…

By analyzing the test data of 2718 secondary school students in Guangzhou China on 15 listening items from Guangzhou English Achievement Examination (2015) through G-DINA model, the study explored the relationships among the listening comprehension skills. Based on the test specifications and listening skill taxonomies in existence, 5 experts in…

Adopting a broader dialogical conceptual lens on interactive listening, this study examines advanced adult learners' language use and thought processes during a problem-solving task. Twenty English as a second language (L2) students from a Scottish university participated in the study. They worked in pairs on the task before taking part in…

Scientific reasoning abilities are already developing in elementary-school-aged children and enable them to understand the world around them. The goal of the current study was to develop a new instrument for 8- to 10-year-old children in Grades 3 and 4 to measure their understanding of the steps of the "scientific inquiry cycle" (SIC).…

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,…

This demonstration introduces and presents an innovative online cognitive diagnostic assessment, developed to identify the types of cognitive processes that readers use during comprehension; specifically, processes that distinguish between subtypes of struggling comprehenders. Cognitive diagnostic assessments are designed to provide valuable…

Children experience difficulties in reading either because they fail to decode the words and thus are unable to comprehend the text or simply fail to comprehend the text even if they are able to decode the words and read them out. Failure in word decoding results from a failure in phonological coding of written information, whereas reading…