Research Findings: Anthropomorphized animal characters have been associated with negative influences on educational outcomes for young children, for example story comprehension and prosocial learning from moral tales. In this study we investigate how character realism and moral theme influence young children's recall of the story content. Retells…

The purpose of this study was to test a hypothesized model that specified direct and indirect effects of textual and individual factors on readers' ability to integrate information about sources and content when reading multiple conflicting texts on a controversial socio-scientific issue. Using a path analytic approach with a sample of 140…

Two experiments used eyetracking during reading to examine the processing of the matrix verb following object and subject relative clauses. The experiments show that the processing of the matrix verb following an object relative is indeed slowed compared to the processing of the same verb following a subject relative. However, this difficulty is…

The RI-Val model of comprehension includes a validation process in which linkages formed by integration are matched against active memory. In five experiments, we investigated factors that influence validation. Reading times were measured on target sentences that contained either correct information or semantically related, but incorrect content.…

Some metacognitive mental activities were explored on chemical reading activities as specific judgments called metacognitive judgments. A think-aloud protocol was carried out to fifteen chemistry teacher candidates to express their judgments on chemical reading activities for question posing. Two chemical articles were designed to stimulate these…

Testing the hypothesis that although a complex paragraph takes longer to read than a simple paragraph, there is no difference in the time taken to make the required inference from memory. (MB)

In secondary-task reading experiments, easy text filled cognitive capacity more completely than difficult text. A cognitive interpretation is that, in reading easy passages, the cognitive processors are full. But in difficult passages, frequent breakdowns in comprehension temporarily empty processor spaces, leaving cognitive capacity for the…

Three experimental tasks were devised to assess the nature of memory processing limitations in fourth-graders' oral reading comprehension. (Author/MP)

Reviewed theoretical and empirical work in phonological recoding, concluding that phonological representation is used to aid comprehension and suggesting that decoding graphemic information into a phonological form is important for early readers. Asserts that future research should examine differences in the use of visual versus phonological…

A study investigated the effect on reading comprehension in English as a Second Language (ESL) of formally incorporating four reading strategies into reading instruction. The four strategies taught were cognitive, memory, compensation, and test-taking strategies. Subjects were 29 students at the University of Alabama of varying language…