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Purpose As technology enables the rapid spread of mis- and disinformation, a critical challenge for scholars and practitioners involves building student’s news media literacy (NML), a subset of media literacy education centered around journalism. This paper aims to offer a case study of secondary civics classrooms that use NML lessons and current events in their curricula, providing an empirical account of teaching techniques being used to support students' dispositions and practices. Design/methodology/approach This multiple case study investigates three secondary classes taught by two teachers. Data collection methods included observations, field notes and interviews with the teachers. Discourse and actions were analyzed by probing the participant structures and means of classroom management. Findings The findings highlight instructional techniques used by both teachers which consisted of instructionist and constructivist approaches, with informative shifts observed between the two. The teachers used instructionist methods when transmitting declarative knowledge (such as key definitions), and constructivist methods when working with students to consider more abstract concepts and developing news stories. Originality/value The demand for NML and associated pedagogy is increasing given awareness of the rapid spread and problematic influence of mis-and disinformation. There is a critical need for describing teachers’ implementations of these pedagogies, given calls for enacting NML into public policy despite limited awareness of the ways they actually unfold in classrooms. The current project shows how instructionist and constructivist frames prove helpful for understanding instructional practices, and for contemplating anticipated designs of NML pedagogy in classrooms.

A large body of research has focused on whether and how readers update their knowledge of events when an initial piece of causal information is corrected. These studies have indicated that corrections can reduce, but do not eliminate, readers' reliance on the initial cause when drawing inferences or making decisions about the events (i.e., the continued influence effect). Additional studies suggest that supplementing a correction with an alternative cause can further reduce reliance on discredited initial causes. In three experiments, we interrogated the importance of cause typicality for the generalizable utility of these correction strategies by manipulating the typicality of initial and alternative causes. We found evidence that participants showed greater reliance on a typical than an atypical initial cause both before and after correction, but no consistent evidence that this typicality impacted the effectiveness of the correction. Furthermore, the typicality of the alternative causes used to supplement a correction did not seem to matter with respect to updating. These results highlight the importance that characteristics of an initial cause can have for event encodings and corrections, identifying critical boundary conditions for understanding the effects of corrections on knowledge revision and the continued influence effect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

We offer short story ("vignette") materials that have been developed and tested with the intention of influencing people's true and false beliefs about the world. First, we present norming data on the baseline rates at which participants from both U.S.-census matched and general U.S. online samples were correctly able to classify a selected set of accurate (e.g., aerobic exercise strengthens your heart and lungs) and inaccurate (e.g., aerobic exercise weakens your heart and lungs) assertions as "True" or "False." Next, we present data which validate that reading vignettes in which people discuss these accurate and inaccurate assertions influences participants' subsequent judgments of the validity of the asserted claims. These vignettes are brief, easy-to-read, allow for flexible and accountable online data collection, and reflect realistic accurate and inaccurate claims that people routinely encounter (e.g., preventative health behaviors, use of alternative medicines and therapies, etc.). As intended, vignettes containing inaccurate assertions increased participants' subsequent judgment errors, while vignettes containing accurate assertions decreased participants' subsequent judgment errors, both relative to participants' judgments after not reading related information. In an additional experiment, we used the vignette materials to replicate findings from Salovich et al. (2021), wherein participants reported lower confidence in correct judgments and higher confidence in incorrect judgments after having read inaccurate assertions. Overall, these materials are well suited for investigations on the consequences of exposures to accurate and inaccurate information, address limitations in currently available stimuli, and align with trends in research practice (e.g., online sampling) within psychological science.

Previous research has identified alliteration as a powerful device for investigating implicit memory effects. For example, alliterative phrases can provide retrieval cues that extend to a sublexical level and reactivate previous information that shares alliterative content (Lea et al., Psychological Science, 19[7], 709-716, 2008). But it is an open question if other surface forms might provide similar effects in line with these empirical findings, and in accord with writer intuitions. The present study examined whether rhyme produces analogous memory-reactivation effects, given the ubiquity of its use and endorsement of its power in a range of materials and experiences. We also examined whether the surface benefits attributed to rhyme might support anticipatory processes such as those traditionally examined with semantic content. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited faster recognition responses to previous poetic content as a function of rhyming cues. In Experiment 2, we recruited participants identified as experts on the study and use of rhyme, replicating the probe facilitations obtained in Experiment 1, but also revealing anticipations of imminent rhymes. The results are discussed in terms of implications for theories of memory-based text processing and of nonsemantic anticipatory processes during the reading of poetry, and perhaps for discourse experiences more generally.

Compelling and interesting introductions are considered an important way of fostering reader engagement with expository-text content. But only a handful of projects have examined this prescriptive ...

Being exposed to inaccurate information in fiction can negatively influence post-reading judgments and decisions. For example, people make more errors judging the validity of statements after reading stories containing related inaccurate as compared to related accurate assertions. While these effects have been demonstrated in a variety of studies, people’s confidence in their post-reading judgments has received little attention. The current experiments examined whether exposure to accurate and inaccurate information embedded in fiction influences readers’ confidence in judging the validity of related claims. Participants read an extended story containing accurate and inaccurate assertions about the world (Experiment 1a) or a control story omitting those assertions (Experiment 1b). Afterwards they judged the validity of single statements related to the critical assertions and provided confidence ratings for each judgment. While participants made more judgment errors after having read inaccurate assertions than after having read accurate assertions or stories without assertions, they were overall less confident in their incorrect as compared to correct judgments. Given the observed relationship between confidence and judgment accuracy, in Experiments 2 and 3 we tested whether allowing and instructing participants to withhold responses might reduce judgment errors. This withholding option reduced participants’ incorrect and correct judgments, failing to specifically eliminate the negative consequences of exposure to inaccurate assertions. These findings are discussed with respect to accounts documenting the influence of inaccurate information, and highlight confidence as a relevant but understudied factor in previous empirical demonstrations of such effects.

People often reproduce information they read, which is beneficial when that information is accurate. Unfortunately, people are also often exposed to inaccurate information, with subsequent reproductions allowing for problematic decisions and behaviors. One empirically validated consequence of exposures to inaccuracies is that after reading falsehoods, participants are more likely to make errors answering related questions than if they previously read accurate statements, particularly for unfamiliar information. Interventions designed to attenuate these reproductions are often ineffective, at least as studied in tasks that restrict participants to generating answers based on text content and relevant prior knowledge. In the real world, however, people have access to outside resources to evaluate information. In three experiments, we tested whether affording the option to search for relevant online information following exposure to inaccurate statements would reduce reproductions of those inaccuracies on a post-reading task. Participants given the opportunity to search for information were less likely to reproduce inaccurate information and more likely to produce correct responses, in comparison to the performance of participants who were not allowed to search. We also tested whether warnings about potentially inaccurate information would encourage searches and inform responses. While warnings increased searching, additional reductions in inaccurate reproductions were not observed. Given the contingencies of many lab tasks, reproductions of inaccurate information might be overestimated. Resources available in the real world can offer useful supports for reducing the influence of and uncertainty associated with inaccurate exposures, consistent with contemporary accounts of memory and comprehension.

People are exposed to inaccurate claims and ideas every day from sources intended to inform, entertain, or do both. A large body of research has demonstrated that exposures to inaccurate statements, even when conveying obviously false ideas, can affect people's subsequent judgments. Contemporary accounts suggest that these effects may be due to people's failure to evaluate information during exposure, increasing the likelihood that false information will be encoded and available for retrieval on subsequent tasks. In three experiments, we investigated whether evaluative mindsets reduce the likelihood people are influenced by and use inaccurate statements, as well as encourage reliance on accurate understandings. In Experiment 1, participants who were instructed to engage in deliberate evaluation of potentially inaccurate statements reproduced fewer inaccurate ideas and produced more correct answers to post-reading questions than did participants who simply rated their interest in the statements. In Experiments 2 and 3, the same benefits were obtained even when participants were not consistently prompted to evaluate the statements. These results offer insight into when and how evaluation can encourage participants to rely on correct prior knowledge over presented inaccuracies, as well as what is required to establish and maintain such an evaluative mindset.

Collaboration can support performance on a variety of tasks, but recent projects have indicated that group collaborations can also be associated with memory decrements. For example, when people discuss ideas, any shared inaccurate information can be used by group members to complete subsequent tasks. Across two experiments, we examined whether this social contagion is influenced by performance pressures that regularly emerge during group interactions. In Experiment 1, participants under individual-directed pressure, goal-directed pressure, or control conditions studied word lists before completing a collaborative recall with a confederate partner who occasionally recalled incorrect words. We examined whether partner-produced inaccuracies contaminated participants' memories for the list contents on a subsequent individual recall. Goal-directed pressure, focused on monitoring partner accuracy, facilitated subsequent individual recall, as demonstrated by reduced reproductions of partner-generated inaccuracies. In contrast, individual-directed pressure, focused on appearing competent, resulted in greater use of those inaccuracies. Experiment 2 ruled out that the benefits associated with goal-directed pressure were solely due to warning participants about the possibility of social contagion. These results demonstrate that different instantiations of pressure can help or hinder memory-related performance in collaborative settings. Under the right conditions, pressure can help overcome the effects of exposure to inaccurate information. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous research has identified alliteration as a powerful device for investigating implicit memory effects. For example, alliterative phrases can provide retrieval cues that extend to a sublexical level and reactivate previous information that shares alliterative content (Lea et al., Psychological Science, 19[7], 709-716, 2008). But it is an open question if other surface forms might provide similar effects in line with these empirical findings, and in accord with writer intuitions. The present study examined whether rhyme produces analogous memory-reactivation effects, given the ubiquity of its use and endorsement of its power in a range of materials and experiences. We also examined whether the surface benefits attributed to rhyme might support anticipatory processes such as those traditionally examined with semantic content. In Experiment 1, participants exhibited faster recognition responses to previous poetic content as a function of rhyming cues. In Experiment 2, we recruited participants identified as experts on the study and use of rhyme, replicating the probe facilitations obtained in Experiment 1, but also revealing anticipations of imminent rhymes. The results are discussed in terms of implications for theories of memory-based text processing and of nonsemantic anticipatory processes during the reading of poetry, and perhaps for discourse experiences more generally.

The current study investigated the role of metacognition with respect to the consequences of exposures to inaccurate information. Previous work has consistently demonstrated that exposures to inaccuracies can confuse people and even encourage reliance on the falsehoods. We specifically examined whether people are aware of their likelihood of being influenced by inaccurate information, and whether engaging in metacognitive reflection is effective at reducing this influence. In three experiments, participants read a story containing false assertions about the world. In Experiment 1, we compared participants' estimated resistance to inaccurate information against the degree to which their subsequent judgments actually reflected an influence of previously read inaccuracies. Participants were generally unaware of their susceptibility to inaccurate information, demonstrated by a lack of calibration between estimated and actual resistance. Their judgments consistently revealed an influence of previously read inaccuracies. In Experiment 2, we applied a metacognitive reflection task intended to encourage evaluation while reading. Participants who completed this task made fewer judgment errors after having read inaccurate statements than did participants who did not engage in reflection. Experiment 3 replicated these effects with a larger sample, and showed benefits of reflection for calibrations between people's estimated resistance and their actual performance. The accumulated findings highlight the importance of metacognitive considerations for understanding and addressing oft-reported, problematic effects of exposures to inaccuracies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Being exposed to inaccurate information in fiction can negatively influence post-reading judgments and decisions. For example, people make more errors judging the validity of statements after reading stories containing related inaccurate as compared to related accurate assertions. While these effects have been demonstrated in a variety of studies, people's confidence in their post-reading judgments has received little attention. The current experiments examined whether exposure to accurate and inaccurate information embedded in fiction influences readers' confidence in judging the validity of related claims. Participants read an extended story containing accurate and inaccurate assertions about the world (Experiment 1a) or a control story omitting those assertions (Experiment 1b). Afterwards they judged the validity of single statements related to the critical assertions and provided confidence ratings for each judgment. While participants made more judgment errors after having read inaccurate assertions than after having read accurate assertions or stories without assertions, they were overall less confident in their incorrect as compared to correct judgments. Given the observed relationship between confidence and judgment accuracy, in Experiments 2 and 3 we tested whether allowing and instructing participants to withhold responses might reduce judgment errors. This withholding option reduced participants' incorrect and correct judgments, failing to specifically eliminate the negative consequences of exposure to inaccurate assertions. These findings are discussed with respect to accounts documenting the influence of inaccurate information, and highlight confidence as a relevant but understudied factor in previous empirical demonstrations of such effects.

There is a rich philosophical and empirical history associated with examinations of the nature of knowledge. Epistemological queries have focused on determining how to characterize knowledge, and on developing methods of supporting people’s accurate understandings. The resulting work has led to contentious debates about whether, when, and how knowledge is amenable to change. These are timely disputes given contemporary concerns about the consequences of exposure to inaccurate information from multiple perspectives (including but not limited to social media, fake news, and unsubstantiated reports), and how information from competing sources influences people’s understandings of the world. Emerging investigations have focused on when and in what ways people might modify what they know. In the current chapter, we highlight two distinct ways that “what people know” has been characterized – as declarative ideas and as constellations of ideas. Different concepts and topics might reflect either of these representational possibilities, which has crucial implications for epistemological investigations and claims about how to modify knowledge. We highlight the challenges and problems that can emerge when researchers confabulate distinct conceptualizations of knowledge representation. These are important considerations for selecting methodological approaches, deriving theoretical models, and arguing for (or against) the generalizability of findings. Suggestions for wrestling with these issues are offered.

This commentary focuses on two important contrasts in the behavioral sciences: ( i ) default versus nondefault study populations, where default samples have been used disproportionately (for psychology, the default is undergraduates at major research universities), and ( ii ) the adoption of a distant versus close (engaged) attitude toward study samples. Previous research has shown a strong correlation between these contrasts, where default samples and distant perspectives are the norm. Distancing is sometimes seen as necessary for objectivity, and an engaged orientation is sometimes criticized as biased, advocacy research, especially if the researcher shares a social group membership with the study population (e.g., a black male researcher studying black male students). The lack of diversity in study samples has been paralleled by a lack of diversity in the researchers themselves. The salience of default samples and distancing in prior research creates potential (and presumed) risk factors for engaged research with nondefault samples. However, a distant perspective poses risks as well, and particularly so for research with nondefault populations. We suggest that engaged research can usefully encourage attention to the study context and taking the perspective of study samples, both of which are good research practices. More broadly, we argue that social and educational sciences need skepticism, interestedness, and engagement, not distancing. Fostering an engaged perspective in research may also foster a more diverse population of social scientists.

People routinely encounter inaccurate information, from fake news designed to confuse audiences, to communications with inadvertent mistakes, to stories made up to entertain readers. The hope is that these inaccuracies can be easily ignored, exerting little influence on our thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, being exposed to inaccuracies leads to problematic consequences. After reading inaccurate statements, readers exhibit clear effects of those contents on their decisions and problem-solving. This occurs even when readers possess appropriate prior knowledge to evaluate and reject the inaccuracies. Exposure to inaccurate information leads to confusion about what is true, doubt about accurate understandings, and subsequent reliance on falsehoods. Interventions and technologies designed to address these effects by encouraging critical evaluation can support effective comprehension and learning.

Readers depend on prior knowledge to successfully comprehend texts. However, they often hold misconceptions, defined here as inaccurate or incomplete conceptualizations, which can interfere with the acquisition of information and the subsequent use of any acquired knowledge. A variety of approaches have focused on modifying text content to address readers’ misconceptions with the goal of supporting accurate understandings. One empirically validated modification involves the use of refutation texts, which identify a misconception, tag it as inappropriate, and provide a more accurate account. To date, the success of refutation texts has predominantly been studied and applied in science domains (e.g., physics). The current project investigated whether similar benefits might also emerge for history topics. Across two experiments, we pre-screened participants for misconceptions about a well-known event in American history and the Civil Rights Movement: Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat. Participants read either a refutation or non-refutation text about the topic and completed measures assessing their moment-by-moment comprehension and post-reading memory of the material. Refutation texts led to greater learning gains in terms of recall task performance and questionnaire responses than did non-refutation texts, providing preliminary evidence for the utility of refutations for supporting readers’ valid historical understandings. Participants also read refutation content faster than non-refutation content, indicating differential processing. The results are discussed with respect to the generalizability of refutation texts for history learning as informed by contemporary models of knowledge revision.

We are regularly confronted with statements that are inaccurate, sometimes obviously so. Unfortunately, people can be influenced by and rely upon inaccurate information, engaging in less critical evaluation than might be hoped. Empirical studies have consistently demonstrated that even when people should know better, reading inaccurate information can affect their performance on subsequent tasks. What encourages people’s encoding and use of false statements? The current article outlines how reliance on inaccurate information is a predictable consequence of the routine cognitive processes associated with memory, problem solving, and comprehension. This view helps identify conditions under which inaccurate information is more or less likely to influence subsequent decisions. These conditions are informative in the consideration of information-design approaches and instructional methods intended to support critical thinking.

Visual narratives, including graphic novels, illustrated instructions, and picture books, convey event sequences constituting a plot but cannot depict all events that make up the plot. Viewers must generate inferences that fill the gaps between explicitly shown images. This study explored the inferential products and memory implications of processing gaps in visual narratives. Participants viewed picture-stories containing event sequences comprised of beginning, bridging, and end states and the presence of these event state panels was systematically manipulated. The pattern of processing times after omitted event panels suggests that participants inferred missing beginning and bridging states but not missing end states. In a recognition test including both seen and unseen event panels, participants' memories were most accurate for end state events. The results suggest that generating inferences distorts memory for explicit content, particularly content that has a high semantic overlap with potentially con...

We regularly consult and construct visual displays that are intended to communicate important information. The power of these displays and the instructional messages we attempt to comprehend when using them emerge from the information included in the display and by their spatial arrangement. In this article, we identify common types of visual displays and the kinds of inferences that each type of display is designed to promote. In particular, we outline different types of semantic and pictorial displays. Then, we describe four main ways in which visual displays can affect cognitive processing including selection, organization, integration, and processing efficiency and how semantic and pictorial displays support these types of processing. We conclude with seven recommendations for designing visual displays and possible directions for future research.

The purpose of this study was to investigate differences between readers with different levels of comprehension skill when engaging in a causal questioning activity during reading, and the varied effects on inference generation. Fourth-grade readers (n = 74) with different levels of comprehension skill read narrative texts aloud and were asked causal questions at specific points during reading. Responses to questions were examined for the types of inferences the readers made during reading. There was no main effect of comprehension skill in terms of readers’ text-based inferences made in response to the causal questions. However, readers differed in their use of knowledge-based inferences in response to the causal questions, and in particular knowledge-based inferences that connected to related text information. Results are discussed in terms of individual differences that can influence attempts at maintaining coherence during reading.

Summary Readers frequently encounter inaccuracies in texts that contradict what they should know to be true. The current project examined readers' moment-by-moment processing of inaccuracies and whether any difficulty with such material is reduced when readers are already familiar with accurate versions of that content. In two experiments, participants read stories that either accurately or inaccurately described the outcome of a well-known historic event. Preceding story contexts supported accurate outcomes or introduced suspense to create uncertainty about outcome likelihoods. During initial readings, participants took longer to read inaccurate than accurate outcomes. But this difficulty was substantially reduced when suspenseful contexts called into question the likelihood of well-known outcomes. Similar reading patterns emerged when participants read the exact same material after week-long and 5-minute delays. These results indicate that biasing contexts can influence readers' processing of inaccuracies for even familiar events. Rereading proves insufficient for encouraging reliance on accurate prior knowledge. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Summary Academic testing has received substantial support as a useful educational activity with robust retention benefits, given that tests can promote retrieval practice. However, testing can also instantiate performance-related pressure and anxiety that may misappropriate the resources responsible for producing learning benefits. The current project examined the effects of performance pressure on retrieval practice. In two experiments, we instantiated performance pressure with either high-stakes or low-stakes quizzes, and assessed memory and comprehension of content on both quizzes and final tests. Quiz performance was equivalent under high-stakes and low-stakes conditions, demonstrating that learners adapted to high-pressure quizzes. However, final test performance was better after low-stakes versus high-stakes quizzes, and only low-stakes quizzes led to a performance advantage over a rereading control group. Participants additionally exhibited some sensitivity to the difficulty of retrieving under pressure. These data highlight the benefits of retrieval practice but indicate that they can be disrupted under pressure-driven conditions. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

People's expectations about the future are guided not just by the contingencies of situations but also by what they hope or wish will happen next. These preferences can inform predictions that run counter to what should or must occur based on the logic of unfolding events. Effects of this type have been regularly identified in studies of judgment and decision making, with individuals' choices often reflecting emotional rather than rational influences. Encouraging individuals to rely less on their emotional considerations has proven a challenge as affective responses are generated quickly and are seemingly informative for decisions. In 6 experiments we examined whether individuals could be encouraged to rely less on their affective preferences when making judgments about future events. Participants read stories in which contexts informed the likelihood of events in ways that might run counter to their preferential investments in particular outcomes. While being less than relevant given the logic of events, participants' affective considerations remained influential despite time allotted for predictive reflection. In contrast, instructional warnings helped attenuate the influence of affective considerations, even under conditions previously shown to encourage preferential biases. The findings are discussed with respect to factors that mediate preference effects, and highlight challenges for overcoming people's reliance on affective contributors to everyday judgments and comprehension.

Authors of fiction need not provide accurate accounts of the world, which might generate concern about the kinds of information people can acquire from narratives. Research has demonstrated that readers liberally encode and rely upon the information provided in fictional stories. To date, materials used to demonstrate these effects have largely included stories taking place in real-world settings. We tested whether readers might exhibit more conservative use of information from stories with unrealistic settings and characers, as in science fiction and fantasy genres. In two experiments, participants read texts containing accurate, misleading, or neutral information, embedded in realistic or unrealistic stories. They subsequently completed a general knowledge test that included probes for story information. Unrealistic stories, in comparison to realistic stories, led to reductions in the use of misinformation. Source monitoring judgments suggest explanations for these reductions. The findings offer intrigu...

We examined the potential effectiveness of four brief interventions, three behavioral and one nutritional, for helping high math-anxious college students regulate negative emotions immediately prior to a time-pressured arithmetic test. Participants with low versus high math anxiety performed a timed arithmetic task after practicing one of three short-term breathing exercises promoting focused attention, unfocused attention, or worry, and after consuming either 0 or 200 mg l -theanine. Overall, participants with high math anxiety underperformed relative to those with low math anxiety. This effect, however, was largely alleviated by a focused breathing exercise, which increased rated calmness and enhanced performance on the arithmetic test amongst those with high math anxiety. l -theanine supplementation showed only minimal effects. These results provide insights into the attentional mechanisms involved in regulating the negative emotions that lead to testing underperformance, and suggest that focused breathing exercises can be a useful, practical tool for helping address the negative impacts of math anxiety.

Students are frequently presented with novel visualizations introducing scientific concepts and processes normally unobservable to the naked eye. Despite being unfamiliar, students are expected to understand and employ the visualizations to solve problems. Domain experts exhibit more competency than novices when using complex visualizations, but less is known about how and when learners develop representational fluency. This project examined students' moment-by-moment adoption patterns for scientific visualizations. In a laboratory experiment, introductory-level organic chemistry students viewed familiar ball-and-stick and novel electrostatic potential map representations while solving chemistry problems. Eye movement patterns, verbal explanations, and individual difference analyses showed that students initially relied on familiar representations, particularly for difficult questions. However, as the task unfolded, students with more prior knowledge began relying upon the novel visualizations. These results indicate adoption and fluent use of visualizations is not given; rather, it is a function of prior knowledge and unfolding experience with presented content.

People learn from the texts that they read, but sometimes what they read is wrong. Previous research has demonstrated that individuals encode even obvious inaccuracies, at times relying on the misinformation to complete postreading tasks. In the present study, we investigated whether the influence of inaccurate information might be reduced by encouraging the retrieval of accurate knowledge. Participants read an extended text that contained both accurate and inaccurate assertions, after which they evaluated the validity of statements associated with those assertions. In general, participants made more mistakes in their evaluations of statements after having read inaccurate as compared to accurate assertions, offering evidence of the influence of misinformation. However, when participants were tasked with correcting inaccuracies during reading, their mistakes were substantially reduced. Encouraging the retrieval of accurate knowledge during reading can reduce the influence of misinformation. These findings are discussed with respect to the contributions of episodic traces and prior knowledge on learning, as well as to the conditions that support successful comprehension.

Teachers use remote labs and simulations to augment or even replace hands-on science learning. We compared undergraduate students’ experiences with a remote lab and a simulation to investigate beliefs about and learning from the interactions. Although learning occurred in both groups, students were more deeply engaged while performing the remote lab. Remote lab users felt and behaved as though they completed a real scientific experiment. We also examined whether realistic visualizations improved the psychological and learning experiences for each lab. Students who watched live video of the device collecting their data in the remote lab felt most engaged with the task, suggesting that it is the combination of the realistic lab and realistic video that was of the greatest benefit.

People often report empathizing with the trials and tribulations of others. While some accounts characterize empathy as a general tendency that individuals possess to differing degrees, an alternative, understudied view is that empathy emerges out of similarity-driven matches between potential targets and empathizers. The current project examines whether these matches, even when not explicitly identified, influence experiences of empathy, and whether that empathy has consequences for comprehension experiences. In two experiments, participants read stories describing protagonists as highly extraverted, highly neurotic, or neither; participants' personalities were also measured along these dimensions. Personality scores predicted participants' self-reported empathy for story protagonists, over and above measures of general empathy. Similarity between readers and protagonists also enhanced more subtle evaluations of the events befalling empathic targets. The effects of empathy have important implications for mental simulation, the motivated pursuit of knowledge, and persuasion.

Objective Evaluate the evidence regarding the relative effectiveness of multimedia and print as modes of dissemination for patient education materials; examine whether development of these materials addressed health literacy. Methods A structured literature review utilizing Medline, PsycInfo, and the Cumulative Index to the Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), supplemented by reference mining. Results Of 738 studies screened, 30 effectively compared multimedia and print materials. Studies offered 56 opportunities for assessing the effect of medium on various outcomes (e.g., knowledge). In 30 instances (54%), no difference was noted between multimedia and print in terms of patient outcomes. Multimedia led to better outcomes vs. print in 21 (38%) comparisons vs. 5 (9%) instances for print. Regarding material development, 12 studies (40%) assessed readability and 5 (17%) involved patients in tool development. Conclusions Multimedia appears to be a promising medium for patient education; however, the majority of studies found that print and multimedia performed equally well in practice. Few studies involved patients in material development, and less than half assessed the readability of materials. Practice implications Future research should focus on comparing message-equivalent tools and assessing their effect on behavioral outcomes. Material development should include explicit attention to readability and patient input.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there are gender differences among elementary school-aged students in regard to the inferences they generate during reading. Fourth-grade students (130 females; 126 males) completed think-aloud tasks while reading one practice and one experimental narrative text. Females generated a larger number and a greater proportion of reinstatement inferences than did males (Cohen's d = .34, p = .01; Cohen's d = .26, p = .04, respectively). In contrast, there was no evidence for gender differences in other types of think-aloud responses. These findings suggest that males and females differ in their use of cognitive processes that underlie reading comprehension, particularly with respect to the likelihood of retrieval of information from episodic memory.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of different types of questioning interventions on students' reading comprehension. Fourth-grade students ( n = 246) were identified as struggling, average, or good readers and assigned randomly within school to one of three questioning interventions: two inferential conditions (Causal or General) or one literal condition (“Who, What, Where, When” or W-questioning). Teachers delivered the interventions for 20–30 min, 2–4 times per week, for 8–10 weeks. All readers made reliable pre- to posttest comprehension gains as measured by story recall ( p s d = .86) whereas paraphrasers benefited more than elaborators from General questioning ( d = 1.46). These findings suggest that identifying subgroups is important in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of reading comprehension interventions.

Reading comprehension is a critical component of success in educational settings. To date, research on text processing in educational and cognitive psychological domains has focused predominantly on cognitive influences on comprehension, and in particular, those influences that might be derived from particular tasks or strategies. However, there is growing interest in documenting the influences of emotional factors on the processes and products of text comprehension, because these factors are less likely to be associated with explicit reading strategies. The present study examines this issue by evaluating the degree to which mood can influence readers’ processing of text. Participants in control, happy-induced, or sad-induced groups thought aloud while reading expository texts. Happy, sad, and neutral moods influenced the degree to which readers engaged in particular types of coherence-building processes in the service of comprehension. Although reading strategies clearly influence processing, understudied factors that are less explicitly goal-driven, such as mood, can similarly impact comprehension activity. These findings have important implications for the role of mood on reading instruction and evaluation.

Students are often provided with instructions that are intended to influence their attention to particular sections or elements of their reading materials. To date, the bulk of the work on such prereading instructions has focused on drawing reader attention to relevant text information. In the current project, we examined whether instructions might also be useful in helping readers ignore irrelevant (albeit inherently interesting) information in text. In two experiments, prereading instructions asked readers to (a) focus on specific relevant text segments, (b) ignore specific irrelevant text segments, (c) maintain an awareness that the text contained irrelevant segments without specifically identifying them, or (d) read without warnings. Participants generally exhibited longer reading times and enhanced recall for irrelevant segments compared to base content, except in cases for which general instructions warned about but did not specifically identify those irrelevant elements. The implications of these findings for research on seductive details and text processing, as well practical applications for the design of reading instruction, are discussed.

A rich base of research has investigated the types of responses that literature engenders in readers. In the current contribution, we consider other aspects of the reading experience that have, to date, gone relatively ignored in empirical study. We explore issues including authors’ decisions about literary constructions, readers’ responses to real-world texts, affective evocations (and their neural underpinnings), and how we know what people have learned from the novels they read. With each issue we recommend potential approaches and methods that might usefully support scientific investigations of readers’ engagements with classic and contemporary literature.

Readers rely on descriptions of characters to generate expectations for future story events. However, readers also have preferences for how they want those events to unfold. Often, what texts imply about how characters will behave and what readers want characters to do converge on similar story events and narrative descriptions. But what are the processing consequences when expectations and preferences suggest competing possibilities? In three experiments, we explored this question utilizing short narrative texts. Each text included information designed to establish positive, negative, or neutral preferences toward characters, as well as behavioral descriptions that supported particular positive or negative character traits. In Experiments 1 and 2, when the valences of reader preferences and implied traits matched, participants overwhelmingly judged characters as likely to possess those traits. With mismatches, though, those judged likelihoods decreased in systematic ways. In Experiment 3, we observed that matches between preferences and implied traits also influenced reading times for story outcomes. These results outline how the inferences that guide narrative comprehension are influenced both by the descriptions that authors provide about characters and events, as well as by the emerging desires that readers develop for those characters and events.

Dear Readers,Discourse Processes is now considering submissions of registered reports, with this issue containing the first such published report for the journal. Registered reports involve peer re...

Dear Readers, One of the initiatives proposed for Discourse Processes, and enacted beginning in this issue, has involved soliciting brief reviews from leaders in fields central to the study of disc...

This special issue of Discourse Processes highlights work from the 27th annual meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania from July 31 to August 2, 2017. It wa...

Northwestern UniversityThe purpose of this study was to examine the simple view of reading (SVR) andcontributions of verbal proficiency and reading fluency to reading comprehension forfourth-, seventh- and ninth-grade readers (N5271). The SVR explained a significantproportion of variance in reading comprehension for all grades with decreasingexplained variance in higher grades. The variance explained by decoding decreasedfrom fourth grade to higher grades. The variance explained by listening com-prehension increased from fourth- to seventh-grade, but did not change from seventh-to ninth-grade. In all grades, verbal proficiency and reading fluency contributedsubstantial additional variance to reading comprehension beyond the SVR. Changesin the predictive relation between listening and reading comprehension and factorsinfluencing reading comprehension in each grade are discussed.