In a seminal 1977 article, Rumelhart argued that perception required the simultaneous use of multiple sources of information, allowing perceivers to optimally interpret sensory information at many levels of representation in real time as information arrives. Building on Rumelhart's arguments, we present the Interactive Activation…

We explored whether exposure to different kinds of comprehension tests during elementary years influenced metacomprehension accuracy among 7th and 8th graders. This research was conducted in a kindergarten through 8th grade charter school with an expeditionary learning curriculum. In literacy instruction, teachers emphasize reading for meaning and…

This work uses the concepts and tools of complexity theory to examine the effect of logical thinking and two cognitive styles, such as, the degree of field dependence/independence and the convergent/divergent thinking on students' understanding of the structure of matter. Students were categorized according to the model they adopted for the…

Recent research on children's inferencing has found that although adults typically adopt the pragmatic interpretation of "some" (implying "not all"), 5- to 9-year-olds often prefer the semantic interpretation of the quantifier (meaning possibly "all"). Do these failures reflect a breakdown of pragmatic competence or the metalinguistic demands of…

What lies behind the lack of theorizing about content in history in contrast to much greater attention given to theorizing about children's developing understanding of historical skills and processes? Egan's model of the characteristic ways in which children of different ages engage with the world is used to raise the question of what content to…

A discussion of the application of artificial intelligence to natural language processing looks at several problems in language comprehension, involving semantic ambiguity, anaphoric reference, and metonymy. Examples of these problems are cited, and the importance of the computational approach in analyzing them is explained. The approach applies…

Web-based statistical instruction, like all statistical instruction, ought to focus on teaching the essence of the research endeavor: the exercise of reflective judgment. Using the framework of the recent report of the American Psychological Association (APA) Task Force on Statistical Inference (Wilkinson and the APA Task Force on Statistical…

This study tested two theoretical models of perceived understanding as a potential mediator of perceived teacher confirmation and students' ratings of instruction. Participants included 651 undergraduate students who completed survey measures. Results of structural equation modeling provided greater support for the confirmation process model,…