Reading--from Words to Multiple Texts

Reading--from Words to Multiple Texts
Author: M. Anne Britt
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2013
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0415501938

Providing a comprehensive overview of research into reading processes from word identification to the comprehension of multiple texts, acknowledged leaders in the field present the state of the art and current controversies in the field.

Focus on Educational Psychology

Focus on Educational Psychology
Author: Alea V. Mittel
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
Total Pages: 376
Release: 2006
Genre: Education
ISBN:

The field of educational psychology is primarily concerned with teaching and learning. Educational psychology has a long historical past and an extensive record of conducting empirical research into the teaching/learning process. Educational psychology has also been involved with the topics of motivation, intelligence, memory, cognition, intellectual development and evaluation and assessment. Over the past 50 years, educational psychology has been predominantly involved with the learning processes of the normal, average student. However, over the past 20 years, mainstreaming and later inclusion has presented an additional challenge for educational psychologists and classroom teachers. This new book presents leading research from around the globe in all areas of educational psychology.

Improvement of Children's Scientific Understanding by Systematic Text Revision

Improvement of Children's Scientific Understanding by Systematic Text Revision
Author: Chi-Shun Lien
Publisher:
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2009
Genre: Cohesion (Linguistics)
ISBN:

The purposes of this study were (1) to examine whether principles of revision that improve the coherence of text, which have been used successfully on texts for advanced readers, can also be used in revising young readers' texts; (2) to investigate whether the principles used to revise history texts can be applied to scientific texts and (3) to look at the interaction between text coherence and reading ability. Two authentic scientific texts (on diabetes and on pain) were revised according to four revision principles, providing argument-overlap, making implicit concepts explicit, changing order of sentences and paragraphs, and adding macro-structure to the text . Ninety-one 6th -grade students were divided into low-ability and high-ability groups and randomly assigned to read either the original texts or the revised texts. Participants' comprehension was measured by free recall, questions assessing knowledge of the textbase (which assessed a shallow level of comprehension), and inference questions (which assessed a deep level of comprehension). Results indicated that young readers' comprehension was superior when the coherent version of the texts was read. High-ability readers performed better than low-ability readers. A significant interaction between text coherence and reading ability emerged on the inference questions for one of the texts. That is, low-ability readers' performance on the inference questions was better when the text was coherent, whereas high ability readers' performance was not improved by making the text coherent. Thus the text coherence affected the deep comprehension level of these low-ability readers. This finding is discussed in terms of its educational implications.--Abstract preceding front matter.

The Science of Reading

The Science of Reading
Author: Margaret J. Snowling
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 680
Release: 2008-04-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0470757639

The Science of Reading: A Handbook brings together state-of-the-art reviews of reading research from leading names in the field, to create a highly authoritative, multidisciplinary overview of contemporary knowledge about reading and related skills. Provides comprehensive coverage of the subject, including theoretical approaches, reading processes, stage models of reading, cross-linguistic studies of reading, reading difficulties, the biology of reading, and reading instruction Divided into seven sections:Word Recognition Processes in Reading; Learning to Read and Spell; Reading Comprehension; Reading in Different Languages; Disorders of Reading and Spelling; Biological Bases of Reading; Teaching Reading Edited by well-respected senior figures in the field

Text-based Learning and Reasoning

Text-based Learning and Reasoning
Author: Charles A. Perfetti
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1136484981

History is both an academic discipline and a school subject. As a discipline, it fosters a systematic way of discovering and evaluating the events of the past. As a school subject, American history is a staple of middle grades and high school curricula in the United States. In higher education, it is part of the liberal arts education tradition. Its role in school learning provides a context for our approach to history as a topic of learning. In reading history, students engage in cognitive processes of learning, text processing, and reasoning. This volume touches on each of these cognitive problems -- centered on an in-depth study of college students' text learning and extended to broader issues of text understanding, the cognitive structures that enable learning of history, and reasoning about historical problems. Slated to occupy a distinctive place in the literature on human cognition, this volume combines at least three key features in a unique examination of the course of learning and reasoning in one academic domain -- history. The authors draw theory and analysis of text understanding from cognitive science; and focus on multiple "natural" texts of extended length rather than laboratory texts as well as multiple and extended realistic learning situations. The research demonstrates that history stories can be described by causal-temporal event models and that these models capture the learning achieved by students. This text establishes that history learning includes learning a story, but does not assume that story learning is all there is in history. It shows a growth in students' reasoning about the story and a linkage -- developed over time and with study -- between learning and reasoning. It then illustrates that students can be exceedingly malleable in their opinions about controversial questions -- and generally quite influenced by the texts they read. And it presents patterns of learning and reasoning within and between individuals as well as within the group of students as a whole. By examining students' ability to use historical documents, this volume goes beyond story learning into the problem of document-based reasoning. The authors show not just that history is a story from the learner's point of view, but also that students can develop a certain expertise in the use of documents in reasoning.

The Role of Reading Fluency, Text Difficulty and Prior Knowledge in Complex Reading Tasks

The Role of Reading Fluency, Text Difficulty and Prior Knowledge in Complex Reading Tasks
Author: Sebastian Wallot
Publisher:
Total Pages: 127
Release: 2011
Genre:
ISBN:

Despite the fact that reading is one of the most frequently studied topics in psychology, cognitive science, and educational science, research on text reading has made only little progress in the past 100 years. This is true for the more basic research on reading as a cognitive activity, where materials that resemble natural texts are usually neglected in favor of tasks that employ only individual words or sentences. It is just as true for applied research, where studies either follow the lead of the 'few-words-approach' or focus exclusively on the outcome of reading performance - such as memory or comprehension of a read passage. In this latter case, the reading activity itself that brings about a certain memory or comprehension result remains in a black box. The work presented in this dissertation tries to bridge this gap. In particular, the aim is to expand the work of Wallot and Van Orden (2011a, b) on the application of complexity metrics to evaluate the process of reading in complex text reading tasks. Complexity metrics, which quantify the degree of stability, complexity, and interconnectedness of performance, are employed to expand the findings on reading fluency in self-paced reading by Wallot and Van Orden (2011a, b) to the level of eye-movements during reading. While reading performance during self-paced reading is estimated by the intervals between key-presses that the reader employs to reveal each new word or sentence of a text, eye-movements are considered to be a more fine-grained measure of the reading process (Rayner, 1978). Hence, study 1 of this dissertation is an attempt to replicate the findings of Wallot and Van Orden (2011a, b), where the time evolutions of the performance of more fluent readers showed higher stability and greater commonality compared to less fluent readers, and the stability of and commonality between less fluent readers' performances increased with repeated reading of the same text. Study 2 gathers first evidence for what distinguishes the process of reading of an easy text from the process of reading of a difficult text. While the results of self-paced reading in study 1 do not replicate all of the effects reported by Wallot and Van Orden (2011a, b), they confirm that the performances of fluent readers share more dynamic structure than the performance of less fluent readers and that the used non-linear methods can successfully distinguish between these two reader groups. The results of eye-movement dynamics show effects similar to those of key-press intervals and also replicate the gain in stability of less fluent readers with re-reading. This seems to suggest that eye-movements are indeed a more sensitive measure that can pick out differences in performance that are not picked out in key-press intervals. The results of study 2 suggest that high text difficulty constrains the dynamics of reading measures in key-press intervals and eye-movements alike, since key-press intervals and eye-movements during reading show greater stability during difficult text reading compared to easy text reading. In conjunction, the two studies provide strong evidence for the utility of complexity metrics to quantify reading performance. Furthermore, the studies present evidence that key-press and eye-movement measures of reading seem to be driven by similar organizational principles, following similar dynamics during reading tasks. However, the results of the two studies seem to be contradictory with regard to the role of dynamic stability, which seems to indicate higher reading skill in study 1, but more difficult reading in study 2. Different possible interpretations of these results are discussed. It is concluded that the observed reading performance can be seen as a synergy between text and reader, and that the stability and complexity of this synergy holds information about the overall properties of reading tasks.