The coherence threshold marks the point at which a reader has gained a sufficient comprehension level to move on in a text. Previous research has demonstrated that the readers' coherence threshold can be manipulated by increasing or decreasing task demands. The present experiments examined a manipulation of the coherence threshold within the text…

The goal of this study was to assess the relationships between computational approaches to analyzing constructed responses made during reading and individual differences in the foundational skills of reading in college readers. We also explored if these relationships were consistent across texts and samples collected at different institutions and…

Text complexity in elementary classrooms is typically measured by traditional readability tools, which rely on surface-level measures of word and sentence complexity. Theoretical and empirical work on text complexity, however, indicates that additional measures of semantics, syntax, and discourse structure may be equally important for…

This study investigates how cohesion manifests in readers' thought processes while reading texts when they are instructed to engage in self-explanation, a strategy associated with deeper, more successful comprehension. In Study 1, college students (n = 21) were instructed to either paraphrase or self-explain science texts. Paraphrasing was…

Standards of coherence are one of the major factors that influence reading comprehension. This study investigated the standards of coherence that second language (L2) learners employ when reading. In a pair of experiments, Japanese learners of English read two-sentence texts with varying causal and semantic relatedness between sentences and then…

Three experiments explored how pictures in award-winning children's storybooks contribute to their cohesion. In Experiment 1, one group of college students read storybooks with pictures, and another group read them with the pictures removed. Both groups answered questions inserted periodically. The source for about one half of the questions was…

This study compared the abilities of 30 sixth-grade, competent readers and 30 adult, competent readers to process syntactic structures under conditions of related and unrelated discourse. Results suggest the ability to process syntactic and semantic elements is not fully developed in children in the 11- to 12-year range. (Author/SJL)

Twenty college students, ten each in the experimental and control groups, were the subjects of an experiment designed to demonstrate that integration of verb meanings occurs in connected discourse. Six paragraph-length stories, each of which included one or two critical sentences containing a general verb, were presented orally to the subjects.…

This study attempted to elucidate the effects of context and level of processing on comprehension and memory for prose. Two aspects of memory for prose were investigated: the amount of information remembered and the semantic interpretation assigned to ambiguous paragraphs. Task instructions and exposure duration of the passages were manipulated to…

Comprehension is a process that occurs within the reader and is at least partially dependent on cohesion and coherence. The concept of cohesion is used to show how sentences which are structurally independent of one another may be linked together. Cohesion exists within a text and is not the same as coherence, which is something the reader…

In an analysis of a processing activities model of memory applied to connected discourse, 206 college students assigned to eight conditions in two studies evidenced significantly greater recall when provided with semantic level tasks than either surface feature analysis or reading control (intentional and incidental) conditions. Additionally,…

This paper discusses a study designed to evaluate the use of semantic and syntactic expectations in reading. Sixteen college-student subjects, measured for reading proficiency by the Nelson-Denny Reading Test, were divided equally into a fast-reading group (350-450 words per minute) and an average-speed reading group (200-275 words per minute).…