A recent article in this journal claims that the simple view of reading represents a long-outdated account of what underlies the ability to read. Its authors argue that if teachers are to be better informed about what is known about reading then the simple view must be replaced by a more current model, one that captures the substantial progress…

The present study examined how argument type (science based vs. personal case based), belief consistency (belief consistent vs. inconsistent) and reading goals (read to evaluate vs. read to learn) influence comprehension and trustworthiness evaluations for claim-conflicting multiple texts. Undergraduates read four conflicting texts about the…

Despite the common and growing use of and instruction on digital reading in schools, the ways in which reading comprehension may operate differently in paper and online environments are still underexplored. Using publicly available national datasets, we explore similarities and differences in how varied comprehension processes relate to each other…

Distributing study opportunities over time typically improves the retention of verbal material compared to consecutive study trials, yet little is known about the influence of temporal spacing on orthographic form learning specifically. This experiment sought to obtain and compare estimates of the magnitude of the spacing effect on written word…

Reading literacy is a multidimensional construct in terms of text and reading processes. Much research has examined the divisibility of the processes underlying reading, but they have treated the rest of the construct as unitary. This study extends the examination of dimensionality to a neglected area in literacy studies. It tests reading models…

As meaning-making increasingly happens in digital spaces, it is essential for researchers to examine how students learn to critically read and navigate within and across constantly changing online platforms. This qualitative study examines university students' experiences reading and navigating online. To do so, the author examines self-created…

In this commentary, the author explores the tension between almost 30 years of work that has embraced increasingly complex conceptions of digital reading and recent studies that risk oversimplifying digital reading as a singular entity analogous with reading text on a screen. The author begins by tracing a line of theoretical and empirical work…

In this essay, I outline some of the essential ingredients of a universal theory of reading acquisition, one that seeks to highlight commonalities while embracing the global diversity of languages, writing systems, and cultures. I begin by stressing the need to consider insights from multiple disciplines including neurobiology, cognitive science,…

Reading comprehension is an incredibly complex, purposeful activity that involves simultaneous orchestration and integration of multiple processes. However, dominant perspectives suggest that two clusters of skills, word reading and language comprehension, account for successful reading. Such two-factor models are problematic because they do not…

Studies on the relation between children's reading motivation and early developmental stages of reading competence are rare and have neglected on-line measures of reading skill (e.g., eye movements indicating word decoding). For this reason, we investigated the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation on the efficiency of reading…

Recently, the term "science of reading" has been used in public debate to promote policies and instructional practices based on research on the basic cognitive mechanisms of reading, the neural processes involved in reading, computational models of learning to read, and the like. According to those views, such data provide convincing…

Syntax, or sentence structure, plays a role in reading comprehension, but how students draw on their awareness of syntax in their reading remains unclear; the mechanism is even more ambiguous in bilingual students. In this study, we evaluated the direct and indirect contributions of syntactic awareness on first-language Chinese and second-language…

General academic words are those which are typically learned through exposure to school texts and occur across disciplines. We examined academic vocabulary assessment data from a group of English-speaking middle school students (N = 1,747). We tested how word frequency, complexity, proximity, polysemy, and diversity related to students' knowledge…

In this position article, the authors explore a confluence of evidence that supports the understanding that multiple factors, various processes, and multiple sources of information inform reading. The authors open by briefly describing concerns related to how some scholars and media reporters have characterized the simple view of reading and…

The authors investigated how eye movements are influenced by different reading goals in participants' first (L1) and second language (L2). Participants read or studied the contents of texts while their eye movements were recorded. One group was asked to read L1 and L2 texts as they would read any expository text (informational reading). Another…