This study investigates how working memory (WM) capacity and L2 linguistic knowledge affect L2 literal and inferential reading comprehension, considering the presence or absence of background knowledge. Eighty upper-intermediate to advanced adult English learners participated, completing tasks to assess WM capacity, background knowledge, L2…

The purpose of this study was to investigate bridging inferences and learning when students with low topic knowledge read multiple complementary biology texts. Using a think-aloud protocol, we assessed students' (n = 74) cognitive processes while they read one text about principles of natural selection and three texts about examples of natural…

Reasoning skills have been clearly related to achievement in introductory undergraduate biology, a course with a high failure rate that may contribute to dropout from undergraduate STEM majors. Existing measures are focused on the experimental method, such as generating hypotheses, choosing a research method, how to control variables other than…

Teaching and learning evolution is challenging. Biology education research shows that the underlying evolutionary concepts are poorly understood among students. This prevents a meaningful understanding of the central biological concepts. The instructional format of self-explanation prompts seems to be promising to respond to these difficulties.…

It is unclear how children learn labels for multiple overlapping categories such as "Labrador," "dog," and "animal." Xu and Tenenbaum (2007a) suggested that learners infer correct meanings with the help of Bayesian inference. They instantiated these claims in a Bayesian model, which they tested with preschoolers and…

Reading comprehension is multidimensional and complex. The persistent challenges children, adolescents, and even adults face with reading comprehension call for concerted efforts to develop assessments that help identify sources of difficulties and to design instructional approaches to prevent or ameliorate these difficulties. Doing so requires…

The goal of the current study is to explore the influence of knowledge on socioeconomic discrepancies in word learning and comprehension. After establishing socioeconomic differences in background knowledge (Study 1), the authors presented children with a storybook that incorporates this knowledge (Study 2). Results indicated that middle-income…

In many situations, readers are asked to learn from multiple documents. Many studies have found that evaluating the trustworthiness and usefulness of document sources is an important skill in such learning situations. There has been, however, no direct evidence that attending to source information helps readers learn from and interpret a…

In this study, we are interested to see the impact of self-discipline on students' knowledge and learning. Self-discipline can influence both learning rate as well as knowledge accumulation over time. We used a Knowledge Tracing (KT) model to make inferences about students' knowledge and learning. Based on a widely used questionnaire, we measured…

Computational models of analogy have assumed that the strength of an inductive inference about the target is based directly on similarity of the analogs and in particular on shared higher order relations. In contrast, work in philosophy of science suggests that analogical inference is also guided by causal models of the source and target. In 3…

This study investigated the effects of culture-specific background knowledge and inferences upon second-language readers' comprehension of text. Ten Korean adult second-language readers were asked to think aloud as they read a short story from another culture and then answer a detailed set of postreading questions. (20 references) (VWL)

This study, with 48 students (including 16 eighth graders with learning disabilities (LD), 16 age level peers, and 16 reading level peers), found that all groups, but especially LD students, benefited from experimenter activation of prior knowledge on reading comprehension tasks testing inferential reading ability. Experimenter activation of prior…

Tested how domain-related knowledge, syntactic complexity, and reading topic influence inference generation in the written recalls of English-speaking participants after they read Spanish historical texts. Three types of inferences were examined: within-text inferences, elaborative inferences, and incorrect inferences. (Author/JL)

The proposition that the mastery of complex tasks embodies several components was studied for 236 students in an undergraduate introductory financial accounting course. A new curriculum was developed for the course that included in-depth exposure to the actual financial statements of a company and the understanding of the structural relationships…