This study examines the extent to which instructions to self-explain vs. "other"-explain a text lead readers to produce different forms of explanations. Natural language processing was used to examine the content and characteristics of the explanations produced as a function of instruction condition. Undergraduate students (n = 146)…

In recent years, a number of insights have been gained into the cognitive processes that explain how individuals overcome misconceptions and revise their previously acquired incorrect knowledge. The current study complements this line of research by investigating the moment-by-moment emotion processes that occur during knowledge revision using a…

Several previous factor-analytic studies on the construct validity of grammaticality judgment tests (GJTs) concluded that untimed GJTs measure explicit knowledge (EK) and timed GJTs measure implicit knowledge (IK) (Bowles, 2011; R. Ellis, 2005; R. Ellis & Loewen, 2007). It has also been shown that, irrespective of the time condition chosen,…

Given evidence that early executive functioning sets the stage for a broad range of subsequent outcomes, researchers have sought to identify ways to foster these cognitive capacities. The current series of studies sought to design, develop, and provide evidence for the efficacy of embedding cognitive activities in a commonplace activity--shared…

The authors conducted 2 eye movement experiments in which they used the typographical and linguistic properties of Arabic to disentangle the influences of words' number of letters and spatial extent on measures of fixation duration and saccade targeting (Experiment 1), and to investigate the influence of initial bigram characteristics on saccade…

Some inconsistency is observed in the results from studies of reading development regarding the role of the syllable in visual word recognition, perhaps due to a disparity between the tasks used. We adopted a word-spotting paradigm, with Spanish children of second grade (mean age: 7 years) and sixth grade (mean age: 11 years). The children were…

Mind wandering, defined as shifts in attention from task-related processing to task-unrelated thoughts, is a ubiquitous phenomenon that has a negative influence on performance and productivity in many contexts, including learning. We propose that next-generation learning technologies should have some mechanism to detect and respond to mind…

The current study examined the relations among key variables that underlie reading comprehension of expository science texts in a diverse population of adult native English readers. Using Mechanical Turk to sample a range of adult readers, the study also examined the effect of text presentation on readers' comprehension and knowledge structure…

Two experiments are reported in which people resolve references to sets of entities (e.g., lies) that have previously been introduced either explicitly into a text ("the lies") or implicitly via a cognate verb (a form of the verb "to lie"). Previous work has show that pronominal references to such entities were judged as…

We introduce a model of Hebrew reading development that emphasizes both the universal and script-specific aspects of learning to read a Semitic abjad. At the universal level, the study of Hebrew reading acquisition offers valuable insights into the fundamental dilemmas of all writing systems--balancing the competing needs of the novice versus the…

Following a review of contemporary models of word-level processing for reading and their limitations, we propose a new hypothetical model of Chinese character reading, namely, the graded lexical space mapping model that characterizes how sublexical radicals and lexical information are involved in Chinese character reading development. The…

This study aimed to examine how second language (L2) readers process and comprehend paired sentences based on the causal and semantic relatedness of the sentences. Causal relatedness refers to the cause-and-effect relations between the events described, whereas semantic relatedness refers to the similarity of meaning conveyed by the sentences. In…

This study examines whether lexical features and textual properties along with individual differences on the part of readers influence word processing times during second language (L2) reading comprehension. Forty-eight Spanish-speaking adolescent and adult learners of English read nine English passages in a self-paced word-by-word reading…

This study investigated parents' reading-related knowledge and its association with children's reading outcomes. Forty-two parent-child dyads were assessed when children were in Kindergarten and 39 of the children were followed the subsequent year. Reading measures were administered in Kindergarten. In Grade 1, children received reading and…

When the act of reading becomes a stimulus, it has the power to enact change within the reader and through readers. Adopting and using the methodological tools of autoethnography, personal narrative, and creative writing, I reflect and explore virtual/online education prompted by a personal reading experience of Ernest Cline's science fiction…