We conducted a multisite replication study with aspects of preregistration in order to explore the feasibility of such an approach in second language (L2) research. To this end, we addressed open questions in a line of research that has examined whether having learners attend to form while reading or listening to a L2 passage interferes with…

Most research in psycholinguistics relies on online measures such as reading time to inform and test theories of language comprehension. However, the value of offline measures such as question-answering performance is sometimes overlooked in sentence processing work. Consequently, psycholinguists do not yet understand how the tasks and measures…

The present study revisited the issue of simultaneous attention to form and meaning from a methodological perspective that addressed several potential methodological issues of previous research in this strand of inquiry. Seventy-two second-semester-level participants were randomly assigned to one of five experimental groups, including a control,…

Outlines the scenario-mapping and focus (SMF) account of text interpretation, which puts mapping of text onto knowledge in a key position with respect to processing. Reviews supporting evidence. Uses plural reference and nonlogical quantification as illustrations of problems that might be better understood within the SMF framework. (SR)

High school juniors and seniors participated in three studies of the effects of a thematic organizer on passage comprehension. Comprehension was measured using a cloze procedure in the first study and using a passage-reproduction task in the second and third studies. A thematic organizer (material presented to provide a context for the passage)…

Four versions of several paragraphs had the same second sentence and were referentially coherent, but they differed in causal relatedness of the two sentences. Results showed that despite referential coherence, recognition and recall memory for the causes was poorest for the most and least related causes and best for causes of intermediate…

Introduces the Knowledge Digraph Contribution (KDC) data-analysis methodology for quantitatively measuring the degree to which a given knowledge digraph can account for the occurrence of specific sequences of propositions in recall, summarization, talk-aloud and question-answering protocol data. Notes the applicability of this approach to the…

Illustrates use of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) for predicting coherence through reanalyzing two studies that manipulated coherence of texts and assessed readers' comprehension. Finds that LSA predicts effects of text coherence on comprehension. Notes that LSA can be applied as an automated method that produces coherence predictions similar to…

Notes that the grading and development of reading texts could be improved through the pinpointing of some linguistic landmarks in language development, discusses the selection and testing of language landmarks, and describes a study that tested children's knowledge of structures involving the word "although." (GT)

Differing views on how meaning in a literacy event is formed have a large impact upon literacy instruction and language research. Teaching and research are often conducted without considering who is in charge of meanings. Yet the answer to this question establishes an interpretive frame that creates the questions, methods, and findings in language…

This study was designed to collect and analyze the verbal protocols of students involved in introspection as they responded to standardized measures of reading comprehension, for the purpose of learning more about the reading process. Eleven seventh grade students from an urban public school were randomly chosen from 61 subjects who met the…

Two unresolved issues in first language and second language research on the role of background knowledge in comprehension are discussed: (1) the theoretical distinction between "content" and "formal" schemata and their interrelationship in texts and (2) the relationship of effects measured in cross-cultural research to background knowledge that…

Reports on research that (1) suggests that phonetically ambiguous pairs (ice cream/I scream) have been used inaccurately to illustrate contextual effects in word segmentation, (2) supports unitary rather than exhaustive processing, and (3) supports the use of the concepts of word frequency and listener expectations instead of top-down, multiple…

The present study addresses the reactivity of two types of verbal protocols in SLA research. It expands on the work of Leow and Morgan-Short (2004), who found nonmetalinguistic verbalization during a second-language reading task to be nonreactive for beginning learners' text comprehension, intake, and production of the targeted morphological form.…

This report describes research into the effectiveness of the language laboratory in improving students' reading, listening and speaking skills in secondary school language programs. The experiment, involving some 5,000 students in 21 school districts of the Metropolitan School Study Council, was restricted to students of French. Student…