The use of science classroom discourse analysis as a way to gain a better understanding of various student cognitive outcomes has a rich history in Science Education in general and Physics Education Research (PER) in particular. When students talk to each other in a collaborative peer instruction environment, such as in the CLASP classes…

Existing reading assessments have increasingly been criticized by researchers, educators, and policy makers, especially regarding their coverage, utility, and authenticity (e.g., Magliano, Millis, Ozuru, & McNamara, 2007; Pellegrino, Chudowsky, & Glaser, 2001; Rupp, Ferne, & Choi, 2006). Specifically, there is concern that current…

The effects of epistemic beliefs and text structure on cognitive processes during comprehension of scientific texts were investigated. On-line processes were measured using think-aloud (Experiment 1) and reading time (Experiment 2) methodologies. Measures of off-line comprehension, prior knowledge and epistemic beliefs were obtained. Results…

This study aims to investigate the relation of syntactic and discourse skills to morphological skills, rapid naming, and working memory in Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia and to examine their cognitive-linguistic profiles. Fifty-two dyslexic readers (mean age, 13;42) from grade 7 to 9 in Hong Kong high schools were compared with 52…

Purpose: The authors assessed adult selective auditory attention to determine effects of (a) differences between the vocal/speaking characteristics of different mixed-gender pairs of masking talkers and (b) the rhythmic structure of the language of the competing speech. Method: Reception thresholds for English sentences were measured for 50…

Research in student knowledge and learning of science has typically focused on explaining conceptual change. Recent research, however, documents the great degree to which student thinking is dynamic and context-sensitive, implicitly calling for explanations not only of change but also of stability. In other words, when a pattern of student…

This article is concerned with how computer science, and more exactly computational complexity theory, can inform cognitive science. In particular, we suggest factors to be taken into account when investigating how people deal with computational hardness. This discussion will address the two upper levels of Marr's Level Theory: the computational…

For native (L1) comprehenders, lower-level language processes such as lexical access and parsing are considered to consume few cognitive resources. In contrast, these processes pose considerable demands for second-language (L2) comprehenders. Two reading-time experiments employing inconsistency detection found that English learners did not detect…

The purpose of the experiment was to examine whether students better understand a science text when they are asked to self-generate summaries or to study predefined summaries. Furthermore, we tested the effects of verbal and pictorial summaries. The experiment followed a 2 x 2 design with representation mode (verbal vs. pictorial) and learning…

In this article, we discuss the Informal Reading-"Thinking" Inventory (IR-TI), an informal reading inventory built on an easily recognized legacy model that also branches out into new realms. The IR-TI provides tools for assessing reading the lines, reading between the lines, and reading beyond the lines. This is a 21st-century…

Reading is conceptualized as a hierarchy of component skills where lower order emergent literacy skills set the foundation for higher order reading skills such as fluency and comprehension. Approximately 20% of readers struggle within this hierarchical process (Fielding, Kerr, & Rosier, 2007). Struggling readers are susceptible to the Matthew…

In this article, the authors state that increases in technological capabilities are enabling more students to complete schoolwork in online learning environments--in addition to and sometimes instead of traditional classrooms. Teachers, parents, and learning coaches who are working with students using these online environments need to know about…

Moving one's eyes while reading is one of the most complex everyday tasks humans face. To perform efficiently, readers must make decisions about when and where to move their eyes every 200-300ms. Over the past decades, it has been demonstrated that these fine-grained decisions are influenced by a range of linguistic properties of the text, and…

The present article investigates spatial- and social-cognitive processes in toddlers' mapping of concepts to real-world events. In 2 studies we explore how event segmentation might lay the groundwork for extracting actions from the event stream and conceptually mapping novel verbs to these actions. In Study 1, toddlers demonstrated the ability to…

Background: Comprehension difficulties are commonly reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) but the causes of these difficulties are poorly understood. This study investigates how children with ASD access and select meanings of ambiguous words to test four hypotheses regarding the nature of their comprehension difficulties: semantic deficit,…