We compared high school students' performance in a traditional comprehension assessment requiring them to identify key information and draw inferences from single texts, and a scenario-based assessment (SBA) requiring them to integrate, evaluate and apply information across multiple sources. Both assessments focused on a non-academic topic.…

Background knowledge is a strong predictor of reading comprehension; yet little is known about how different types of background knowledge affect comprehension. The study investigated the impacts of both domain and topic-specific background knowledge on students' ability to comprehend and learn from science texts. High school students (n = 3650)…

This study demonstrates the generalization of previous laboratory results showing the benefits of self-explanation reading training (SERT) to college students' course exam performance. The participants were 265 students enrolled in an Introductory Biology course, 59 of whom were provided with SERT training. The results showed that SERT benefited…