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Background: People with aphasia (PWA) frequently experience difficulties in understanding longer written content such as paragraphs or books. Reading strategies are a promising approach to treat text‐level reading comprehension deficits in PWA. Nevertheless, empirical evidence for their efficacy remains rare. Aims: The primary objective of this study was to analyse the efficacy of a strategy‐based intervention on text‐level reading comprehension in PWA. Secondary objectives were to compare the effects of two strategy‐based intervention components and to explore potential moderator effects. Methods & Procedures: A protocol was published prior to data acquisition. In a repeated measures trial, 26 German participants with chronic, post‐stroke aphasia participated in a waiting period without aphasia treatment (control condition) followed by a strategy‐based intervention called 'Strategiebasierte Textverständnis‐Therapie bei Aphasie' (StraTexT, 14 face‐to‐face‐sessions, twice per week, 60 min each). Two strategy combinations, Intervention Micro targeting microstructure and Intervention Macro targeting macrostructure, were applied to newspaper and magazine articles. Participants were randomly allocated to two parallel groups that received these strategy combinations in interchanged sequences. Assessments were implemented before and after each period as well as 3 and 6 months after the intervention. The primary outcome measure was text‐level reading comprehension measured with the total score of a German version of the Test de Compréhension de Textes (TCT‐D). Secondary outcome measures addressed the self‐reported perception of reading abilities, reading activities and feelings about reading (German version of the Comprehensive Assessment of Reading in Aphasia CARA reading questionnaire) as well as selected cognitive functions. Outcomes & Results: The per‐protocol‐analysis included data from 22 participants. We found significant small improvements up to 6 months post‐intervention compared to pre‐intervention in the TCT‐D Total (d = 0.35–0.46) as well as medium to large improvements in the CARA questionnaire (d = 0.68–0.96). Up to 3 months after the intervention, treatment‐induced improvements in the TCT‐D Total were significantly larger than change without treatment during the control condition. There was no evidence of moderator effects. Furthermore, we found improvements in several cognitive functions. Conclusions & Implications: Reading strategies can lead to long‐term improvements in text‐level reading comprehension and in self‐reported reading abilities, feelings about reading and reading activities in aphasia. In regular clinical settings, it seems reasonable to implement both Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro. It remains important to investigate participant characteristics that contribute to treatment success. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject: Systematic reviews and multiple case studies suggest that reading strategies are a promising approach to treat text‐level reading comprehension in aphasia. The efficacy of reading strategies has been demonstrated for different populations. However, to date no group study has evaluated the efficacy of reading strategies on text‐level reading comprehension in people with aphasia. What this study adds: This study provides the first group‐level evidence about the efficacy of a systematic strategy‐based intervention in 22 people with post‐stroke chronic aphasia. During 14 treatment sessions, participants applied four reading strategies to newspaper and magazine articles within two intervention components called Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro (two strategies per intervention component). We found improvements in text‐level reading comprehension for at least 3 months post‐intervention, as well as effects on selected cognitive functions and self‐reported reading abilities, thoughts and feelings about reading and the ability to engage in reading activities. What are the clinical implications of this work?: The strategies and materials evaluated in this study could be used in clinical practice with people with aphasia. In order to replicate treatment effects in clinical practice, we suggest applying the strategy combination with the same protocol features (e.g., frequency, duration, homework, product orientation) as in this study, implementing Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro sequentially in either order. As treatment response was not equal in all individuals, it seems important to investigate individual features that contribute to treatment success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For decades, research on metacomprehension has demonstrated that many learners struggle to accurately discriminate their comprehension of texts. However, while reviews of experimental studies on relative metacomprehension accuracy have found average intra-individual correlations between predictions and performance of around.27 for adult readers, in some contexts even lower near-zero accuracy levels have been reported. One possible explanation for those strikingly low levels of accuracy is the high conceptual overlap between topics of the texts. To test this hypothesis, in the present work participants were randomly assigned to read one of two text sets that differed in their degree of conceptual overlap. Participants judged their understanding and completed an inference test for each topic. Across two studies, mean relative accuracy was found to match typical baseline levels for the low-overlap text sets and was significantly lower for the high-overlap text sets. Results suggest text similarity is an important factor impacting comprehension monitoring accuracy that may have contributed to the variable and sometimes inconsistent results reported in the metacomprehension literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The understanding of hadith takes place in the light of the knowledge of the jurisprudence of hadith, and this arises from the basic principles that organize the process and course of understanding hadith. In addition to the efforts of commentators and narrators in dealing with narrations as a religious text, hermeneutic knowledge, despite its periodic and theoretical differences, is an attempt to understand the text. In this regard, in the present study, with a descriptive-analytical method and in a comparative approach, the principles of hadith jurisprudence of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli were examined in relation to the process of understanding the text in Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic views. Interpretation leads to the commentator. However, it is necessary to pay attention to the author and his characteristics in the basics of hadith jurisprudence of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli in order to approach the serious meaning of the speaker. In Paul Ricoeur’s views, the text has a special place in relation to the author and the interpreter, and new meanings emerge from the world of the text. This is while paying attention to the text and its semantic layers, the characteristics of the author and the authenticity of the narrations of the Infallibles (peace be upon them) as well as the level of understanding of the addressee and his ijtihad ability in the principles of hadith jurisprudence of Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, each with a specific share. Is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This systematic literature review examined the research on prior knowledge and its activation to ascertain how these terms are defined, what specific techniques have been empirically investigated, and the conditions under which prior knowledge activation facilitated students' comprehension. Fifty-four articles met the inclusion criteria and revealed that the terms prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation were often vaguely defined. Further, 30 unique techniques for activating readers' prior knowledge representing eight different categories were identified. Those categories were open-ended prompts, procedural or strategic supports during reading, visual representations, analogical reasoning, text alteration, augmented activation, extratextual activities, and spontaneous activation. Techniques meant to facilitate knowledge activation prior to reading were most common, although the prompting of students' existing knowledge was beneficial during and after reading as well. Variability in the effectiveness of activation techniques was related, in part, to the amount, accuracy, and specificity of students' knowledge. Based on the key findings identified in this review, recommendations for future inquiry are forwarded, including suggested definitions of prior knowledge and prior knowledge activation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students' monitoring of their text comprehension must be accurate for self‐regulated learning to be effective. Completing causal diagrams after reading (i.e., diagramming) already improves students' monitoring accuracy to some extent. We investigated whether providing secondary school students with a standard (i.e., correctly completed) diagram and self‐scoring instructions would further improve their monitoring accuracy and text comprehension in a delayed (Experiment 1; n = 98) or immediate (Experiment 2; n = 177) diagramming design. Self‐scoring instructions did not improve monitoring accuracy or text comprehension compared to the control condition(s) in either experiment. Presumably, students self‐scored their diagrams even without instructions to do so. In contrast to findings from prior diagramming research without standards, an explorative analysis suggests that delayed and immediate diagramming did not produce differences in monitoring accuracy. Immediate diagramming, however, led to better text comprehension than delayed diagramming and may therefore be preferable over delayed diagramming under certain conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents theoretical background and empirical research on text comprehension processes of a junior school-age child. The first part of the paper discusses the most influential models of text comprehension and inference making as centrally important component of comprehension. The research findings concerning children's text comprehension are discussed as well. Further, we present our ongoing empirical research, which focuses on children's inference making when listening to and reading an informational, narrative, and multimodal text. We focus both on the online and offline inferences, i.e., on the inferences during and after listening to and reading the text. The aim of the research is to find out how children make different types of inferences and to compare their individual skills in inference making. The last part of the paper outlines preliminary data collected via retelling technique after reading the informational text. The data indicate individual differences between children in processing and verbalising information from the text and beyond the text. However, to draw complex conclusions about individual inference making profiles of children, further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Impaired processing of written text in dyslexic children is of current interest but poorly studied problem. Integration of the activity theory and eye-tracking methods enabled to manage a systemic structural and functional analysis of reading process as an activity. This study aimed examined the oculomotor measures as referents of mental actions performed in the process of reading a printed text by 9–11 year old children with dyslexia. Eye movements during the text reading were recorded using an eye-tracker. Each participant received four texts: two scientific texts and two fiction texts. Characteristics of gaze movements, such as the duration and number of fixations, amplitude, and frequency of occurrence of micro, short, medium, and long regressive saccades, were analyzed. Statistical ANOVA analysis of the data revealed significant differences between the dyslexic children and their typically developing peers in all oculomotor characteristics. These results suggest that children with dyslexia have a reading activity dysfunction not only at the lexical but also at the propositional and semantic levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories have a powerful ability to shape our beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge about the world. In the current work, we ask how readers evaluate the truth of facts embedded in fiction. In three experiments, we investigate the influence of the credibility of the story's narrator on the likelihood that readers encode and recall misinformation contained in the narrative. Participants read stories containing accurate real-world facts and misleading lures. The stories were narrated by either a credible or a non-credible narrator. Following the stories, participants were tested for the critical story information with a free response test of their general knowledge (Experiments 1 and 2) or with a speeded true-false test (Experiment 3). Overall, narrator credibility had no influence on readers' memory for accurate information. However, readers were more likely to reproduce and affirm misinformation when it was delivered by a credible than a non-credible narrator. The current studies suggest that the credibility and the expertise of the source of the information are critical in determining what readers remember and believe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: An interplay of emotional and cognitive aspects underlies academic performance. We focused on the contribution of such interplay to text comprehension. Aims: We investigated the effect of worry on comprehension and the role of two potential moderators of this effect: physiological self‐regulation as resting heart rate variability (HRV) and working memory updating. Sample: Eighty‐two seventh graders were involved in a quasi‐experimental design. Methods: Students read an informational text in one of two reading conditions: to read for themselves to know more (n = 46; low‐worry condition) or to gain the highest score in a ranking (n = 36; high‐worry condition). Students' resting HRV was recorded while watching a video of a natural scenario. The executive function of working memory updating was also assessed. After reading, students completed a comprehension task. Results: Findings revealed the moderating role of HRV in the relationship between induced worry and text comprehension. In the high‐worry condition, students with higher resting HRV performed better than students who read under the same instructions but had lower HRV. In contrast, in the low‐worry condition, students with higher resting HRV showed a lower performance as compared to students with lower HRV. Finally, working memory updating was positively related to text comprehension. Conclusions: Our findings indicate that the cognitive component of anxiety, that is, worry, plays a role in performing a fundamental learning activity like text comprehension. The importance of physiological self‐regulation emerges clearly. In a condition of high worry, higher ability to regulate emotions and thoughts acts as a protective factor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, based on observations of our own pedagogical work, we consider different didactic approaches to the same literary text (the short story ‘From Prague to Brno’ by Jiří Kratochvil) in the teaching of Czech as a foreign language and in the teaching of literature, including analysis of literary texts. The starting point is a comparison of the learning objectives in both of these contexts, followed by a presentation of specific tasks and lines of inquiry vis-à-vis the text, their justification, and analysis of student reactions. In conclusion, we emphasize those aspects that should be considered in the teaching of literary and prose texts, not only by foreign language teachers but also (in our view) teachers of literature and literary interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between students' cognitive and self-regulatory strategies, academic engagement, and academic achievement in higher education, analyzing the mediating role of reading comprehension. Different tasks to assess the constructs were administered to 209 students (Mage = 21.71; SD = 4.36). The students' GPA was used as a measure of academic achievement. Significant associations were found between cognitive and self-regulation strategies, academic engagement, reading comprehension, and students' GPA. In addition, a positive association was found between cognitive and self-regulation strategies and academic engagement. Finally, the structural equation model showed that cognitive and selfregulation strategies and academic engagement have direct effects on students' GPA. Additionally, an indirect effect of cognitive and self-regulation strategies on academic achievement was observed through reading comprehension. The implications of the study are discussed in terms of the importance of promoting the recognition and implementation of students' own cognitive and metacognitive strategies and engagement, in order to improve their academic achievement in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an eye-tracking-while-reading study, we investigated adult monolinguals' (N = 80) processing of two-clause sentences embedded in short narratives. Three principles theorised to guide comprehension of complex sentences were contrasted: one operating at the clause level, namely clause structure (main clause – subordinate clause or vice versa), and two operating at the discourse-level, namely givenness (given-new vs. new-given) and event order (chronological vs. reverse order). The results indicate that clause structure mainly affects early stages of processing, whereas the two principles operating at the discourse level are more important during later stages and for reading times of the entire sentence. Event order was found to operate relatively independently of the other principles. Givenness was found to overrule clause structure, a phenomenon that can be related to the grounding function of preposed subordinate clauses. We propose a new principle to reflect this interaction effect: the grounding principle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reading academic and specialised texts in a foreign language is a difficult process, and support for making materials more linguistically accessible is scarce. Approaches used in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching could inform responses to this, as in EFL academic texts are routinely simplified to make them more comprehensible. However, there is a lack of research on the most used method of making texts more accessible – intuitive text simplification. In this study, 24 experienced EFL teachers with Spanish, Chinese and Russian language backgrounds were asked to simplify two academic texts in an online task and then to explain their rationale for each change in a follow-up stimulated recall interview. The study showed that despite the reliance on subjective approximations of comprehensibility in intuitive simplification, there is a shared understanding among teachers as to what constitutes a more accessible academic text in English. The study creates a clearer conceptualisation of the processes involved in intuitive text simplification and suggests a set of pedagogical guidelines that can be used in language teacher training for both general and specific English teaching purposes, as well as in training and support of English-medium instruction (EMI) teachers. • Teachers often have to simplify academic texts, with limited support. • EFL is the most immediate context of use of text simplification. • EFL teachers intuitively simplified academic texts using 15 key sub-strategies. • There is a shared understanding among EFL teachers about linguistic accessibility. • Intuitive simplification can be a useful exercise in teacher training programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One major question in the study of metaphors historically is: Are different mechanisms involved in the comprehension of figurative statements versus literal statements? Many studies have addressed this question from a variety of perspectives, with mixed results. Following Harati, Westbury, and Kiaee (Behavior Research Methods, 53, 2214-2225, 2021), we use a computational (word embedding) model of semantics to approach the question in a way that allows for the quantification of the semantic relationship between the two keywords in literal and metaphorical "x is a y" statements. We first demonstrate that almost all literal statements (95.2% of 582 statements we considered) have very high relatedness values. We then show that literality decisions are slower for literal statements with low relatedness and metaphorical statements with high relatedness. We find a similar but smaller effect attributable to the cosine of the vectors representing the two keywords. The fact that the same measurable characteristics allow us to predict which metaphors or literal sentences will have the slowest literality decision times suggests that the same processes underlie the comprehension of both literal and metaphorical statements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces a test for literary text comprehension in university students of English as a second language. Poetry is especially suited for our purpose since it frequently shows features that offer challenges to comprehension in a limited space. An example is Shakespeare's Sonnet 43, on which our test is based: it is suited for assessing not only if a text has been understood but also the ability of respondents to reflect on their own comprehension skills. We show that the test's psychometric properties are satisfactory, and we demonstrate its validity by analysing relevant external indicators. Thus, we can show a direct link between general reading experience and text comprehension as tested: the more students read, the better do they perform. The collaboration of literary studies with psychometrics moreover allows for a statistically valid identification of specific challenges to comprehension and thus advance our knowledge of what readers find difficult. This will be of interest not only in a hermeneutic and linguistic perspective but also with a view to addressing those difficulties in an educational context. For example, asking someone whether they have understood an utterance (in this case: a line of poetry) does not elicit reliable answers. Being able to say how one has established the meaning of a line seems to be a more reliable indicator of actually having understood it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Memory for text is represented at 3 levels: the surface form, textbase, and situation model. Although prior research has shown that these levels of representation can be differentially emphasized at the time of encoding, the influence of retrieval instructions on the use of these levels has not been tested. Moreover, there has been no assessment of how this influence might change over time. We assessed memory under both verbatim- and consistency-based instructions. For the verbatim instructions, people indicated whether probe sentences were actually read in the text. For consistency instructions, people responded based on whether probe sentences were consistent with what had been read earlier. A transitory influence view suggests that instructions at retrieval would guide the information used immediately, but not after a delay, when some levels of representation have faded. In contrast, a stable influence view suggests that retrieval instructions would guide the information used both immediately and after a delay. The results revealed that the verbatim instructions emphasized surface form and textbase measures, but consistency instructions emphasized situation model measures. This pattern shifted somewhat over a 1-week delay, with surface form memory becoming equivalent but the differences at the other 2 levels remaining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In teacher education, case-based learning with text-based cases is an efficient method to foster pre-service teachers' diagnostic competence. To adaptively utilize text-based cases, knowledge about effects of text characteristics and empathy on processing text-based diagnostic information is needed, but still scarce. Our study focuses on effects of two text characteristics, text style and text subject, and of empathy on the accuracy of case-based cognitive models. We examined this experimentally. 391 pre-service teachers read a case in psycho-narrative or externally focalised style (text style) about test anxiety or dyscalculia (text subject). We measured self-reported state- and trait-empathy and assessed cognitive models with a recognition and verification test. Regression analyses showed a main effect of text-style but not of text-subject, trait- and state-empathy, and moderation effects of text style and affective (but not cognitive) state-empathy. We draw implications for adaptively designing text-based cases and possible mechanisms of how empathy is involved in diagnostic judgement formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text comprehension, a daily academic activity in primary and secondary school, is especially challenging for deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) students. The present study analyzed the effect of text genre (narrative vs. expository) on accuracy and eye-movement patterns during text comprehension by DHH students (ages 9–15 years) when compared to a typically hearing (TH) control group matched for chronological age. Comprehension accuracy was found to be similar across text genres for both groups, though TH participants outperformed DHH participants. Regarding eye movements, both groups spent more time and made more regressive fixations in the expository text than in the narrative text, but DHH participants showed longer saccade amplitude in the expository than in the narrative, which could be interpreted as indicating better self-regulation of DHH readers in the easiest and more familiar narrative text structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-regulation has a positive impact on learning and academic achievement, but due to its nature, it is difficult to assess it in a valid and reliable manner. This study aims to explore the validity of three self-regulation assessment methods in text comprehension tasks (questionnaire, think-aloud and traces) as well as to identify the variables associated with reading performance. For this purpose, individual sessions were conducted with 96 sixth-grade primary education students, who were asked to read a text and complete two reading comprehension tasks working in a virtual environment. Task traces were recorded, think-aloud was recorded and coded, and participants answered a self-report questionnaire about the strategies used. A limited relationship was found between self-regulation measured by means of the questionnaire, think-aloud and traces, and the relationship between think-aloud and traces was moderate. Regarding the factors related to text comprehension task performance, think-aloud and task time measurements were found to be better predictors of performance than the questionnaire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to illuminate the relationships between the three components of oral reading fluency, sustained attention, working memory, and text comprehension in typically developing third‐grade students (N = 140). The findings of hierarchical regression analysis reveal that speed, accuracy, and prosody together significantly explained the variance in text comprehension after taking sustained attention and working memory into account. In the final model, in which all variables were included, only prosody uniquely contributed to text comprehension. The subsequent mediation analyses revealed that prosody had a full mediating role in the relationship between working memory and text comprehension. This finding suggests that via retention of phonological information in the working memory, prosody contributes to the comprehension of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to expand the scope of interpersonal pragmatics and deals with the issue of ‘recipient’s emotions’ which is the least developed area of communication research into emotions. The authors promote the sociopragmatic conception of emotional processes and highlight the strategic nature of emotional impact in communicative situations. The study focuses on the analysis of emotion-evocative communication in terms of the reader’s emotional interest with reference to expository texts from Russian school textbooks. The main purpose of the study is to identify how the strategic use of language increases text-triggered interest. In order to achieve this purpose, the study applies not only linguistic methods intended to explore the strategic manner of language usage, but also experimental methods intended to verify a possible emotional impact. The linguistic analysis reveals that there are three main ways the strategic use of language increases text-triggered interest: expression of dialogicity, concretisation, and manifestation of emotions. The experimental results prove their provoking functions and demonstrate a leading role of linguistic-based factors in interest-evocative communication. The study suggests that the recipient’s interest is often provoked by text-based factors, and text-triggered interest is dependent on the linguistic structure of the discourse. The linguistic strategies used to increase text-triggered interest might be treated as a foundation for different interest-evoking strategies and as a discursive dimension of the recipient’s interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring is important for self-regulated learning from text, but is often inaccurate. Completing causal diagrams after reading texts has been shown to improve monitoring accuracy. We investigated whether providing one or two model answer diagrams and self-assessment instructions would improve learners' monitoring accuracy, regulation accuracy, and text comprehension. Because little is known about how accurately learners who are reading in a language other than their home language monitor their comprehension, we also explored whether effects differed between readers who have English or another language as their home language. Participants were 258 secondary school students at international schools in Singapore and Spain; 103 spoke a language other than English at home. Participants read 4 texts, completed diagrams on these texts, monitored comprehension, took a first comprehension test, self-assessed their diagram under one of 6 conditions resulting from a 3 (model answer: 0, 1, 2) x 2 (self-assessment instructions: yes, no) design, made restudy decisions, made monitoring judgments, and completed a final comprehension test. Comprehension benefitted most when learners had access to two model answers. There were no effects of model answers or self-assessment instructions on monitoring accuracy. Regulation accuracy improved with model answers combined with self-assessment instructions. There was no differential effect of home language. This study supports prior research showing the benefit of model answer diagrams on comprehension. Yet, improvements in regulation accuracy suggest that model answers combined with self-assessment instructions support more effective self-regulated learning behaviors. • Readers are inaccurate at monitoring comprehension; diagramming improves accuracy. • Little is known about monitoring accuracy of readers with other home languages. • Model answers improve text comprehension for all learners. • Model answers and self-assessment instructions do not impact monitoring accuracy. • Model answers with self-assessment instructions improve regulation accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text comprehension is a major obstacle for many Primary school students with special education needs (SEN). Reading episodes bring students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and knowledge, potentially boosting their development of text comprehension skills. Our study seeks to understand how reading frequency (leisure and academic) and reading medium (print and digital) contribute to the development of text comprehension during Primary school in students with and without SEN. We tested 2289 Spanish students from fourth to sixth grade, from which 212 had an official decision of SEN. Students self-reported their reading frequency (as a measure of their reading habits) and completed a standardized text comprehension test. We employed multiple regression models with a robust maximum likelihood estimator to test associations between reading frequency and comprehension. Students' comprehension was positively associated with their leisure print reading habits, and negatively associated with their frequency of academic digital reading. Those associations were independent of SEN status. Results highlight the importance of promoting leisure reading in print to all students, regardless of SEN status. In addition, caution is advised when encouraging Primary school children to use digital texts when the emphasis is on comprehending texts for acquiring knowledge. • Primary school students with special education needs (SEN) reported lower reading frequency than their peers without SEN. • Leisure print reading habits positively correlated with primary school students' comprehension, irrespective of SEN status. • Academic digital reading habits negatively correlated with primary school students' comprehension, regardless of SEN status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Generative activities (e.g., diagramming) after reading possibly improve monitoring. • We tested if feedback (correct diagram) further improves monitoring and text comprehension. • Participants adapted judgements of learning after receiving a correct diagram. • Diagramming + feedback improved monitoring accuracy and text comprehension. • Standards helped identify mistakes and prepare for the comprehension test. Accurate self-monitoring of text comprehension is critical for effective self-regulated learning from texts. Unfortunately, it has been repeatedly shown that students' monitoring of their text comprehension is often inaccurate, which can subsequently lead to inaccurate regulation and ineffective restudy decisions. Previous research provided evidence that completing causal diagrams at a delay after text reading (i.e., diagramming) can help to improve students' monitoring of text comprehension. However, even after diagramming, there is still substantial room for improvement. The current studies therefore aimed to test whether providing feedback in the form of a correctly completed diagram (i.e., performance standard) would further increase students' monitoring accuracy. In Study 1, 79 participants (aged 18–23) made judgements of learning under four conditions: I. No-Diagram (control), II. Standard-Only, III. Diagramming-Only, or IV. Diagramming + Standard. In each condition, students studied a text, made a judgement of learning before and after the experimental tasks, and completed a comprehension test at the end of each of the (overall six) trials. Results showed that only Diagramming + Standard improved monitoring accuracy and text comprehension. In Study 2, 20 undergraduate students (aged 18–23) completed the Diagramming + Standard condition while their eye movements were tracked and subsequently replayed for cued retrospective verbal reporting. The findings suggest that students used the standards to identify mistakes and improve their monitoring and text comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The use of active comprehension strategies that encourage students to explain what they have read can improve students' comprehension of complex scientific texts. Most research has focused on either strategies that are engaged during reading (online) or those used after reading (offline)—often ignoring potential interactions that might occur in authentic learning. This study uses a 2(online: think‐aloud, self‐explain) × 3(offline: reread, free recall, explanatory retrieval) design with a 7‐day delayed comprehension test to examine how online and offline explanation strategies affect comprehension. Linear mixed effects modeling will be used to examine both main effects and interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research in English has suggested that reading rate predictions can be improved considerably by taking average word length into account. In this study, we investigated whether the same regularity holds for Dutch. The Dutch language is very similar to English, but words are on average half a letter longer: 5.1 letters per word (in non-fiction) instead of 4.6. We collected reading rates of 62 participants reading 12 texts with varying word lengths and examined which change in the English equation accounts for the Dutch findings. We observed that predictions were close to the best-fitting curve as soon as the average English word length was replaced by the average Dutch word length. The equation predicts that Dutch texts with an average word length of 5.1 letters will be read at a rate of 238 words per minute (wpm). Texts with an average word length of 4.5 letters will be read at 270 wpm, and texts with an average word length of 6.0 letters will be read at a rate of 202 wpm. The findings are in line with the assumption that the longer words in Dutch do not slow down silent reading relative to English and that the word length effect observed in each language is due to word processing effort and not to low-level visual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study proposes that flow is not only a key predictor of the pleasures of reading narratives but also modulates other important dimensions of the fiction reading experience, such as a sense of being present in the story world, identification with protagonists, feelings of suspense, cognitive involvement with the story, and text comprehension. All of these aspects, which until now have mostly been investigated separately, were assessed online for 373 participants after they read a chapter of Homer's The Odyssey. To measure flow, we administered an extended and revised reading-specific flow scale, which showed adequate factorial structure, good reliability estimates, and theoretically expected associations with flow-related constructs and criteria. Despite rather high intercorrelations, confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that flow, presence, identification, suspense, and cognitive involvement constituted distinguishable dimensions within the fiction reading experience. Structural equation modeling further provided evidence that flow can be a key component in this experience. Specifically, it revealed positive effects of flow on presence, identification, suspense, reading pleasure, and text comprehension. Model comparisons supported the role of flow as a mediator and catalyst for other positive reading dimensions. Moreover, pruned models suggested that flow together with suspense increased the model's predictive validity by serving as a suppressor variable. Although, to date, the concept of flow has played only a minor role in research on fiction reading, our results suggest that it deserves being integrated into future theoretical frameworks and empirical investigations of positive reading experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Good readers use various comprehension strategies to understand texts. However, many students lack knowledge on how to purposefully and effectively use text comprehension strategies. In this experimental study, the effectiveness of teaching text comprehension strategies on vocabulary and text comprehension at literal, inferential and evaluative levels was evaluated among 257 sixth-grade students from 10 Estonian schools. Accordingly, skim reading, vocabulary building, monitoring, generating and answering questions, and identifying the main idea and summarising were taught by Estonian language teachers during a 3-month intervention period. Group-level analysis indicated that students in the experimental condition improved their vocabulary and text comprehension at all levels, whereas students from the control condition improved only their literal text comprehension. Individual-level analysis revealed that students in different profile groups of the experimental condition benefited from the intervention. However, in the control condition, only those students with average vocabulary and text comprehension increased their literal comprehension. As various strategies can improve students' text comprehension at different levels, they should be included in the curriculum and reading lessons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade or so, developments in language comprehension research in the domain of cognitive aging have converged on support for resilience in older adults with regard to situation model updating when reading texts. Several studies have shown that even though age-related declines in language comprehension appear at the level of the surface form and text base of the text, these age differences do not apply to the creation and updating of situation models. In fact, older adults seem more sensitive to certain manipulations of situation model updating. This article presents a review of theories on situation model updating as well how they match with research on situation model updating in younger and older adults. Factors that may be responsible for the resilience of language comprehension in older age will be discussed as well as avenues for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The SARS-Cov-2 pandemic created a severe psychosocial and medical shock all over the world. For more than a year, humanity struggled with adjusting to different measures that governments imposed on the population worldwide. Educational systems all over the world were forced to comply with the new conditions of activity. In this context, different reactions emerged, and skills were used and developed. The coronavirus pandemic was and still is a stressful worldwide event that disrupted, among numerous other things, the everyday life of professional activities and the manner of their deployment. This study aims to investigate the relationship between variables like: analytical reasoning, text comprehension, detail perception, conscientiousness, emotional stability and autonomy. A sample of 327 students from Ovidius University of Constanta, aged between 19 and 50 years, were assessed using Cognitrom Assessment System. Results show that: (1) there is a positive correlation between analytical reasoning, text comprehension and detail perception; (2) analytical reasoning positively correlates with conscientiousness and emotional stability; (3) text comprehension correlates with emotional stability; and (4) detail perception has no significant correlation with any of the studied personality traits. Results are interpreted and discussed in the end of the article, in relationship with the use of these intellectual skills and personality traits in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, especially by certain population categories which had to use the online environment for their regular professional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines text formulations in the interaction between peers in primary school during dialogic reading, in inquiry learning settings. In this context pupils collaboratively use information from texts to answer their research questions. The data analyzed include 25 excerpts of pupils demonstrating understanding of text. We used Conversation Analysis to analyze how pupils demonstrate their understanding by the use of text formulations, as a specific type of formulations, and how these formulations function as a bridge between the reading action and the discussion of text content. Parallel to the types of conversational formulations (gist and upshot), we found two practices of demonstrating understanding, namely (1) formulating the gist of relevant text to demonstrate literal understanding, and (2) formulating an upshot to demonstrate how the text contributes to the reading goal. Both types are used to establish shared understanding of text, but focus the discussion as well on what participants find relevant information in the text to further talk about. To reach shared understanding and to use it for next steps, both interactants need to have access to the text in some way. This study contributes to our understanding of how pupils collaboratively use text to build their knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• fMRI BOLD-signal is analyzed during the comprehension of natural narratives. • fMRI BOLD-signal analysis allows to define lexical clusters with similar activation patterns. • Lexical clusters include words that are situationally related to each other. • The conceptual brain system encodes situational information to process concepts. • Conceptual information is processed in distributed but specific regions of the brain. This article is a part of a large-scale brain mapping project aimed at finding the relations among semantic categories in oral Russian-language texts and brain activity as measured using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The goal of present study in particular is to examine the nature of lexical semantic relations and find an appropriate lexical space, homeomorphic to the activation patterns in the brain. Participants were presented with oral narratives, which described significant social issues from the first-person perspective. Stimuli were annotated using a dictionary and a vector approach. Results show that fMRI signal and clusters of related words have similar patterns of brain activation across participants. Results also show that annotation by a list of features more strongly contributes to prediction of the observed activation patterns. Findings confirm the hypothesis of situational semantic representation in the brain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aimed to examine the relationship between morphological knowledge and reading comprehension ability among college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) students. One hundred and twenty-one students participated in this study and they completed two morphological knowledge measures (morpheme-form knowledge and morpheme-meaning knowledge), reading vocabulary knowledge, lexical inference and reading comprehension. Drawing upon hierarchical regression and path analysis, the study found that morphological knowledge explained a unique proportion of variance in reading comprehension after word-meaning knowledge was accounted for. In addition, morphological knowledge had direct and indirect effects on EFL reading comprehension via reading vocabulary breadth and lexical inference ability. To be more specific, the mediating effect of morpheme-meaning knowledge seemed to be salient in EFL reading comprehension. Conceptual and methodological interpretations were discussed based on the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: School‐aged children are increasingly engaging with multiple conflicting texts to understand complex societal issues; however, empirical research has not yet examined in what ways contextual factors affect detection of and memory for conflicts. Methods: The current experiment manipulated contextual factors that included the vocabulary terms that authors of different texts used when describing the same concepts and the order with which students accessed contradictory information. Results: After controlling for general science knowledge, adolescent students displayed longer reading times when contradictory stances were presented in an alternating fashion than they did when texts were blocked by stance. When text presentation was alternating, students also remembered more conflicts when the texts used the same vocabulary terms than they did when the texts used different vocabulary terms (non‐obvious synonyms). However, when adolescents read texts blocked by stance, they remembered a similar number of intertextual conflicts regardless of whether texts used the same or different vocabulary. Conclusion: The findings suggest that different contextual factors can facilitate (but also undermine) propensities to notice and remember conflicts across texts. As such, the findings have important implications for theories of text comprehension and applications for adolescents' everyday reading experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies on text sequencing found learning advantages of interleaving over blocking in terms of high‐level inferences. We conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 mixed factorial experiment with college students (n = 117) by manipulating text sequence (interleaved vs. blocked) and self‐questioning activity while reading (spontaneous vs. prompted) between subjects and testing delay (immediately vs. 1‐week delay) within subjects. Results revealed that students are spontaneously engaged in self‐questioning and inferential processing while reading an interleaved text. Students who were spontaneously engaged while reading an interleaved text outperformed their counterparts in all other conditions in the immediate and delayed test on comparative reasoning, inductive reasoning, and memorization of factual details. The learning advantages were mediated by inductive inferences made while reading an interleaved text. Results support the discriminative contrast view that readers are encouraged to discover the underlying regularities when differences and similarities among categories are accentuated by their juxtaposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integral training of university students includes, among others, the development of soft skills, which have been neglected to give greater interest to specific and specialty skills. One of the soft skills is communicative competence, which encompasses the skills of understanding and producing texts. Under this premise a descriptive research was carried out, with the purpose of identifying the panorama of literary education at the National University of the Altiplano, considering as dimensions of analysis: identification of subjects that address literary education, model assumed in the use of literature, teaching-learning strategies, and students' level of comprehension and production of texts. Three techniques were used to collect data: document analysis, survey and examination. The results show that 77% of Professional Schools have subjects that develop literary competence, approached from two models: the textual model and the model based on the knowledge of the text; the most used strategies are creative writing, dramatization, text commentary and essay writing; the level of comprehension and production of texts is average. It is concluded that literary education is part of the university curriculum, implicitly or explicitly, promoting the development of various soft skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scientific literature supports the hypothesis of a disadvantage in students' performances when learning tasks are conducted in the digital mode in comparison to the paper one. Some studies suggest the need of investigating the role of individual cognitive functioning in digital reading and writing with special attention to those cognitive processes, such as Executive Functions (EF), which are acknowledged to control and affect learning and school adaptation. The present study aimed to: 1) investigate the differences in performances between paper and digital modalities in text reading and text writing in primary grade students; 2) analyse whether EF predict performances in paper and digital modalities; 3) explore whether any differences between paper and digital text comprehension or writing can be differently explained by EF depending on the children's learning performances. 175 typically developing Grades 3–5 students performed text comprehension and text writing tasks on computer and on paper and were assessed with EF tasks tapping inhibitory control, working memory and cognitive flexibility. The results showed no performance differences between digital and paper tasks at the group level apart from a higher text length in the digital than paper mode. However, children with low performances at the comprehension and writing tasks benefited more from the digital than the paper mode, in comparison to high performers that showed the opposite pattern. Additionally, low performers scored worse than high performers in most of the EF tasks. Lastly, working memory explained the digital-paper difference in text comprehension among low comprehenders as well as cognitive flexibility explained the difference in level of narrative complexity and number of words among low writers. The results suggest the benefit of the digital mode for low readers and writers and highlight the role of the main components of EF in reading and writing in both paper and digital modes in primary school. • Poor primary readers and writers benefit more from the digital mode • Poor primary readers and writers show low Executive Functions • Executive Functions predict both digital and paper reading and writing • Executive Functions support the digital-paper differences [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents the results of the development and testing of the system for constructing neurosemantic maps of the human brain based on fMRI data. The method of modeling the reaction of brain regions to the presentation of stimulus material has been developed and implemented, and neurosemantic maps in the gray matter of the human brain have been visualized. Personally and emotionally significant texts in Russian were used as a testing stimulus material. The results of semantic clustering analysis of the obtained model at individual and group level will be considered in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For (facilitating) effective learning from texts, students and teachers need to accurately monitor students' comprehension. Monitoring judgments are accurate when they correspond to students' actual comprehension. Accurate monitoring enables accurate (self-)regulation of the learning process, i.e., making study decisions that are in line with monitoring judgments and/or students' comprehension. Yet, (self-)monitoring accuracy is often poor as the information or cues used are not always diagnostic (i.e., predictive) for students' actual comprehension. Having students engage in generative activities making diagnostic cues available improves monitoring and regulation accuracy. In this review, we focus on generative activities in which text is transformed into visual representations using mapping and drawing (i.e., making diagrams, concept maps, or drawings). This has been shown to improve monitoring and regulation accuracy and is suited for studying cue diagnosticity and cue utilization. First, we review and synthesize findings of studies regarding (1) students' monitoring accuracy, regulation accuracy, learning, cue diagnosticity, and cue utilization; (2) teachers' monitoring and regulation accuracy and cue utilization; and (3) how mapping and drawing affect using effort as a cue during monitoring and regulation, and how this affects monitoring and regulation accuracy. Then, we show how this research offers unique opportunities for future research on advancing measurements of cue diagnosticity and cue utilization and on how effort is used as a cue during monitoring and regulation. Improving measures of cue diagnosticity and cue utilization can provide us with more insight into how students and teachers monitor and regulate students' learning, to help design effective interventions to foster these important skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report ERP evidence for local (preceding sentence) and global (thematic centrality) influences on word-to-text integration. Helder et al. (2019) found that the preceding sentence, rather than the central theme, is the primary source of integration, indexed by the N400 on the sentence-initial noun. The present experiments add evidence for thematic centrality effects. In Experiment 1, an N400 reduction occurred on the sentence-initial noun when an antecedent was remotely positioned in the preceding sentence and referred to the central theme, relative to Baseline. Experiment 2 further encouraged thematic processing by having participants select passage titles, producing an N400 reduction for sentence-initial nouns related to the central theme. Sentence-final nouns showed local influence on the N400 and P600, with no effect of centrality. We conclude that thematic centrality can influence integration across a sentence boundary when the antecedent is less accessible and the reader's task encourages attention to global structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Validation of text information as a general mechanism for detecting inconsistent or false information is an integral part of text comprehension. This study examined how the credibility of the information source affects validation processes. Two experiments investigated combined effects of source credibility and plausibility of information during validation with explicit (ratings) and implicit (reading times) measurements. Participants read short stories with a high-credible versus low-credible person that stated a consistent or inconsistent assertion with general world knowledge. Ratings of plausibility and ratings of source credibility were lower when a credible source stated a world-knowledge inconsistent assertion compared with a low-credible source. Reading times on target sentences and on spillover sentences were slower when a credible source stated an assertion inconsistent with world knowledge compared with a low-credible source, suggesting that source information modulated the validation of implausible information. These results show that source credibility modulates validation and suggest a bidirectional relationship of perceived plausibility and source credibility in the reading process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text comprehension comprises processes that work interactively to create a situation model of a text. Three hundred and one students from 12 Estonian schools were assessed to examine the relations between vocabulary and different text comprehension levels and to detect students' individual profiles in these skills. Both variable- and person-oriented approaches were used to analyse overall patterns in the data as well as to make inferences regarding students' individual differences. Vocabulary was found to have the strongest influence on inferential and literal comprehension, whereas evaluative comprehension was slightly less related to vocabulary. Person-oriented approaches revealed different patterns in students' vocabulary and comprehension skills. Individual differences in vocabulary and comprehension levels emphasise the need to assess students' comprehension with multidimensional tests aimed at determining the shortcomings in comprehension components and tracking students' developmental changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: the existence of specific effects of emotion on text comprehension in adults has been experimentally verified. However, there is no information regarding adolescents, which is relevant for the design of interventions. Objective: this research study aims to assess whether dimensionallyconceptualized emotional states (valence, arousal and dominance) affect the comprehension and retrieval of written texts in adolescents. Method: following instrument validation, three experiments (n = 468) were performed. They consisted in inducing emotions which differed in one dimension (valence, arousal or dominance) and kept others the same, in order to assess the role of each dimension on comprehension and retrieval processes (i.e., positive vs. negative valence; stable arousal and dominance in experiment 1). Results: the results indicate that valence has an impact on text comprehension and shows a better performance in positive than negative emotional states. On the other hand, activation occupies a central role in memory processes independently of other emotional dimensions, with higher performance in high activation states. Finally, dominance did not show any significant effect. Conclusions: the results suggest that the valence of emotional states is mostly related to reasoning and induction processes, while activation is associated with changes in information storage and retrieval processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An eye-tracking study explored perspective effects on eye-movements during reading. We presented texts that included either a personal perspective (you) or an onlooker perspective (he or she). We measured whether fixations on the pronouns themselves differed as a function of perspective, and whether fixations on pronouns were affected by the emotional valence of the text which was either positive or negative. It was found that early in the text, processing of you is easier than he or she. However, as the character referred to by he or she becomes more familiar, fixations on he or she decrease, specifically in negative contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a novel method for assessing text coherence. Central to this approach is an ontology‐based representation of text, which captures the level of relatedness between consecutive sentences via ontologies. Our method encompasses annotating text using ontological concepts and assessing text coherence based on relatedness measurement among these concepts. The ontology‐based relatedness measurement method used in this study considers various types of relationships in ontologies and derived relationships via an inference engine for computing relatedness. We hypothesized that rich variety of relationships and inferred facts in ontologies would improve the success of text coherence assessment. Our results demonstrate that the use of ontologies yields to coherence values that have a higher correlation with human ratings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Reading can be assessed using different materials, including non‐words and texts. Unlike reading words or non‐words, reading a text may be supported by reading comprehension, and the extent of this support could change with the amount of schooling. Aim: The present study aimed to examine how reading decoding in a shallow orthography like Italian changed with years of schooling, depending on the type of material and the contribution of non‐word reading and reading comprehension to text reading speed. Methods: Six hundred and forty two typically developing Italian students from 8 to 16 years old were involved. They were administered grade‐appropriate tasks assessing text reading speed, non‐word reading speed, and reading comprehension. Results: The results showed that, although the two reading speed measures correlated closely, non‐word reading speed improved only slightly with age, while the increase in text reading speed was steeper. Reading comprehension was a significant direct predictor of text reading speed after controlling for non‐word reading speed. Importantly, however, while the difference in reading speed between non‐words and text widened with schooling, the role of reading comprehension declined significantly, the ΔR2 dropping from.10 in primary school to just.01 in high school. Conclusions: These findings and their implications are discussed in the light of the relationship between reading comprehension and reading speed in a language with a shallow orthography across school grades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]