In a series of analyses over mega datasets, Jones, Johns, and Recchia (Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 66(2), 115-124, 2012) and Johns et al. (Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 132:2, EL74-EL80, 2012) found that a measure of contextual diversity that takes into account the semantic variability of a word's contexts provided…

This paper presents results from an experimental study that examined embedded strategy prompts in digital text and their effects on calibration and metacomprehension accuracies. A sample population of 80 college undergraduates read a digital expository text on the basics of photography. The most robust treatment (mixed) read the text, generated a…

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…

Systematically observing instruction for students with learning disabilities (LD) provides information regarding the quality of school-based interventions, allocation of instructional time, and other implementation variables associated with student outcomes. In this synthesis, observation studies of reading and mathematics instruction from 2000 to…

Among different types of metaphors, lexical metaphors are special in that they have been highly lexicalized and often suggested to be processed like non-metaphorical words. The present study examined two types of Chinese metaphorical words which are conceptualized through body parts. One has both a metaphorical meaning and a literal meaning…

Social studies instruction in upper elementary school (Grades 3-5) is important for building foundational content knowledge to equip students for the secondary school curriculum. Due to numerous school initiatives and demands on the time of teachers, social studies instruction can play second fiddle to reading and mathematics instruction, which…

Background: Much research has been devoted to understanding cognitive correlates of elementary mathematics performance, but little such research has been done for advanced mathematics (e.g., modern algebra, statistics, and mathematical logic).Aims: To promote mathematical knowledge among college students, it is necessary to understand what factors…

Background: Poor comprehenders are children who show significant deficits in their reading comprehension performance, despite average, or above-average word reading ability. To date, there have been no in-depth studies of the mathematical performance profiles of such children. Aims: This study aimed to explore the mathematical profiles of poor…

A fundamental assumption of many theories of conversation is that comprehension of a speaker's utterance involves recognition of the speaker's intention in producing that remark. However, the nature of intention recognition is not clear. One approach is to conceptualize a speaker's intention in terms of speech acts [Searle, J. (1969). "Speech…

Interest in students who exhibit characteristics with difficulties in learning can be traced as far back as 1800. In order to better understand the complexities and causes of learning disabilities, many researchers (Bannatyne, 1968, 1974; Rugal, 1974) have investigated ways to better identify learners who struggle with academics. A strong argument…

Inference is discussed as a factor in the derivation of non-explicit antecedents and referents for three types of discourse anaphora: definite pronouns, "one"-anaphora, and verb phrase ellipsis. This derivation process is seen as being part of the normal process of text-understanding. It is claimed that the use of non-explicit…

Attempts have been made to develop a model of the process of reading comprehension as a whole that would indicate under what conditions and for what reasons a long sentence might be more effective than several short ones, when repetition is helpful and when distracting, when content is better left implicit in a text, and how overexplicitness might…

Thirty-six fourth grade pupils were grouped according to reading ability in a study conducted to examine comprehension within the framework of event perception. The children were presented a sequential activity described in picture or text form and then were asked to indicate on scoring sheets which of eight test items logically fit with the event…

Reader-response criticism may elucidate the relationship between reading and knowing. Unfortunately, discussions of stylistics and convention in anthologies of reader response criticism tend to focus on fairly specialized literary problems. David Bleich's subjective paradigm provides a framework through which the study of both response and…

This paper provides a general description of schema-theoretic models of language comprehension and examines some extensions of such models to the study of reading. The goal of schema theory is to specify the interface between the reader and the text: to specify how the reader's knowledge interacts with and shapes the information on the page and to…