The current set of experiments was designed to explore the processing of spatial information during reading, specifically the "spatial-shift" effect and the "spatial-gradient" effect. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that when participants were presented with text alone (i.e., without prior map memorization, virtual…

We examined knowledge-based inference in 6-, 8- and 10-year-olds. Participants listened to texts where the number of clues for an inference was manipulated and then judged whether single-word probes (target inference, competing inference, literal word from the text and an unrelated concept) were related to the story. Accuracy and response times…

The comprehension of connectives is crucial for understanding the discourse relations that make up a text. We studied connective comprehension in English to investigate whether adult comprehenders acquire the meaning and intended use of connectives to a similar extent and how connective features and individual differences impact connective…

A referential metaphor is a cohesive tie between lexical items that are metaphorically related, (e.g. "'The seagull' took the bread from the coffee table. No one heard the 'thief'"). The reference from "the thief" back to "the seagull" is metaphorical because thieves are human. The present article presents arguments…

When a situation could lead to multiple mutually exclusive consequences, recent research shows that people automatically generate multiple predictive inferences in memory. Several theoretical mechanisms have been proposed to account for the generation of predictive inferences. One hypothesis is that inferences are minimally encoded, represented…

We examined the impact of prospective information on the processing of information occurring within the present timeline of narrative stories. Participants read target sentences that were consistent with events occurring within a protagonist's present timeline but inconsistent with events in the protagonist's future. When prospective information…

The present study examined the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and comprehension on a multiple text assessment from the ACT test for college preparedness in which texts are available during question answering. Specifically, it was of interest whether differences in relations would be seen across different question types. Only…

This study examined 57 learners' emotions (i.e., joy, anger, confusion, frustration) as they engaged with scientific content while learning about microbiology with Crystal Island, a game-based learning environment (GBLE). Measures of learners' prior knowledge, in-game text comprehension, facial expressions of emotion, and posttest reading…

Understanding visual narratives requires readers to track dimensions of time, spatial location, and characters across a sequence. Previous work has found situational changes across adjacent panels differ cross-culturally, but few works have examined such situational dimensions across extended sequences. We therefore investigated situational…

Readers often prioritize processing and comprehension of information perceived as relevant to a particular intention. Using a repeated-measurement study, we investigated how readers' prior beliefs and external reading perspectives influence processing and comprehension of belief-relevant texts on two socioscientific controversies. University…

We segment what we read into meaningful events, each separated by a discrete boundary. How does event segmentation during encoding relate to the structure of story information in long-term memory? To evaluate this question, participants read stories of fictional historical events and then engaged in a postreading verb arrangement task. In this…

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers' comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to…

Do people comprehend texts differently based on genre expectation, i.e. whether they are instructed to read a text as fiction or nonfiction? In earlier studies conducted before the prevalence of digital and online reading, texts labeled as nonfiction demonstrated greater situational-model comprehension (gist), while the same text labeled as…

We examined genre-specific reading strategies for literary texts and hypothesized that text categorization (literary prose vs. poetry) modulates both how readers gather information from a text (eye movements) and how they realize its phonetic surface form (speech production). We recorded eye movements and speech while college students (N = 32)…

In the current study, we investigated the role of vocabulary knowledge in the relation between working memory (WM) and reading comprehension, in a sample of 55 typically developing 8-year-old Italian children. The role of WM in comprehension is well-established, as both involve similar processes for successful task performance (i.e., active…