Readers build a mental representation of text during reading. The coherence building processes readers use to build a mental representation during reading is key to comprehension. We examined the effects of self- explanation on coherence building processes as undergraduates (n =51) read five complementary texts about natural selection and…

Students are starting middle school without the foundational reading skills necessary to access the texts in their content area classes, such as science and social studies. This is causing great frustration for the teachers who feel unsure of how to help these students because they did not learn about how students learn to read in their teacher…

Prior knowledge is one of the strongest contributors to comprehension, but there is little specificity about different aspects of prior knowledge and how they impact comprehension. This article introduces the Multidimensional Knowledge in Text Comprehension framework, which conceptualizes prior knowledge along four intersecting dimensions: amount,…

Prior knowledge is one of the strongest contributors to comprehension, but there is little specificity about different aspects of prior knowledge and how they impact comprehension. This article introduces the Multidimensional Knowledge in Text Comprehension framework, which conceptualizes prior knowledge along four intersecting dimensions: amount,…

In this experiment we investigated whether the presentation of domain principles within one text facilitates reading to learn from multiple exemplar texts that feature the importance of the principles. There were five texts about natural selection: a principles text, which described principles of natural selection, and four exemplar-based texts…

Teachers' knowledge of reading comprehension processes is under-researched relative to teachers' knowledge of word identification and phonological awareness. In this study, sixty-two pre- and inservice upper-elementary and middle school English language arts, science, and social studies teachers completed in-depth interview protocols eliciting…

The present study sets out to address a critical academic feature necessary to understand research articles (RAs) through investigating foreign language (FL) Tunisian doctoral students' awareness of the kind of relationship between text, writer, and readership in English research articles across three distinct disciplines: Linguistics, Economics,…

Constructing a knowledge representation from multiple texts requires the integration of information across texts. The aim of the current study was to investigate how elementary school students integrate information across multiple text passages and, particularly, whether students use information from a prior text to improve understanding of a…

Purpose: The purposes of this study is to expand on previous work in English language arts (ELA) disciplinary literacy and to unpack literary text reading processes across three different participant groups. Design/methodology/approach: The authors recruited literary scholars and first-year college students to read literary texts aloud and voice…

During comprehension, readers' general world knowledge and contextual information compete for influence during integration and validation. Fantasy narratives, in which general world knowledge often conflicts with fantastical events, provide a setting to examine this competition. Experiment 1 showed that with sufficient elaboration, contextual…

The purpose of this study was to investigate bridging inferences and learning when students with low topic knowledge read multiple complementary biology texts. Using a think-aloud protocol, we assessed students' (n = 74) cognitive processes while they read one text about principles of natural selection and three texts about examples of natural…

To create a coherent and correct mental representation of a text, readers must validate incoming information; they must monitor information for consistency with the preceding text and their background knowledge. The current study aims to contrast text- and knowledge-based monitoring to investigate their unique influences on processing and whether…

Universidad Tecnológica de Santiago (UTESA) is a university considered as one of the highest ranking universities in the Dominican Republic, it is one of the few to be recognized by the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology as an autonomous university for its constant research and updating. This university offers to college students…

The essays below were prepared following the LRA session organized by Janice Almasi entitled, "Examining the relative contributions of content knowledge and strategic processing to comprehension." What unites these essays are the personal and historical stances that each writer has taken; in addition, the essays are rich with…

The National Reading Panel (NRP) identified five pillars, or essential components, of reading instruction that lead to the highest chance of reading success--phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. A decade after the NRP's report, the majority of US states adopted the Common Core State Standards/English Language Arts…