Infographics are a new type of reading material comprising textual and visual information that has been used worldwide. Nonetheless, there has been limited research investigating people's infographic-reading performance and the characteristics of superior readers. This study adopted Chinese texts and infographics as materials and employed…

When laypeople read controversial scientific information in order to make a personally relevant decision, information on the source is a valuable resource with which to evaluate multiple, competing claims. Due to their bounded understanding, laypeople rely on the expertise of others and need to identify whether sources are credible. The present…

Two experiments demonstrate that individual differences among normal adult readers, including lexical quality, are expressed in silent reading at the word level. In the first of two studies we identified major dimensions of variability among college readers and among words using factor analysis. We then examined the effects of these dimensions of…

Proficiency in digital literacy refers to the ability to read and write using online sources, and includes the ability to select sources relevant to the task, synthesize information into a coherent message, and communicate the message with an audience. The present study examines the determinants of digital literacy proficiency by asking 150…

There is concern that the violations of conventional grammar (both accidental and deliberate) often seen in text messages (e.g., "hi [smiley face emoticon] how is ya?!!") could lead to difficulty in learning or remembering formal grammatical conventions. We examined whether the grammatical violations made by 244 British children,…

While a number of studies have investigated the influence of background knowledge and reading comprehension strategies on comprehension, no L2 research exists examining and comparing the unique contributions of these two variables examined together. Therefore, the purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the combined and individual…