The majority of research in computational psycholinguistics on sentence processing has focused on word-by-word incremental processing within sentences, rather than holistic sentence-level representations. This study introduces two novel computational approaches for quantifying sentence-level processing: sentence surprisal and sentence relevance.…

It has been repeatedly found that idioms are processed faster than syntactically matched literal phrases, in both comprehension and production. This has led to debate about whether idioms are accessed as chunks or built compositionally, with different studies attempting to measure the effect of compositionality on processing, with differing…

Cognitive-informed reading education research utilises models that are underpinned by the notion that reading is a mental process of word recognition multiplied by language comprehension. Examples of these models include the Simple View of Reading, the Cognitive Foundations Framework, the Reading Rope and the Active Model of Reading. These models…

Formative assessment plays a critical role in improving learning outcomes by providing feedback on student mastery. Open-ended questions, which require students to produce multi-word, nontrivial responses, are a popular tool for formative assessment as they provide more specific insights into what students do and do not know. However, grading…

In this study, we asked how the emotional status, i.e., valence and arousal, and concreteness of idioms contribute to their processing. Additionally, we asked whether the contribution of emotional factors and concreteness is modulated by other linguistic constraints, specifically idiom familiarity and decomposability, that has been shown to impact…

Reading comprehension is one of the essential skills for students as they make a transition from learning to read to reading to learn. Over the last decade, the increased use of digital learning materials for promoting literacy skills (e.g., oral fluency and reading comprehension) in K-12 classrooms has been a boon for teachers. However, instant…

Readers build a mental representation of text during reading. The coherence building processes readers use to build a mental representation during reading is key to comprehension. We examined the effects of self- explanation on coherence building processes as undergraduates (n =51) read five complementary texts about natural selection and…

Modeling reading comprehension processes is a critical task for Learning Analytics, as accurate models of the reading process can be used to match students to texts, identify appropriate interventions, and predict learning outcomes. This paper introduces an improved version of the Automated Model of Comprehension, namely version 4.0. AMoC has its…

This study used a correlational design and a path analytic approach to investigate direct and indirect relationships between strategic backtracking and integrated text understanding when undergraduates read a digital informational text on a tablet or a smartphone. In digital reading contexts, strategic backtracking involves that readers…

The current study investigated gender (control) and number (target) agreement processing in Northern and non-Northern Norwegians living in Northern Norway. Participants varied in exposure to Northern Norwegian (NN) dialect(s), where number marking differs from most other Norwegian dialects. In a comprehension task involving reading NN dialect…

Reading comprehension is essential for both knowledge acquisition and memory reinforcement. Automated modeling of the comprehension process provides insights into the efficacy of specific texts as learning tools. This paper introduces an improved version of the Automated Model of Comprehension, version 3.0 (AMoC v3.0). AMoC v3.0 is based on two…

Background: Word-to-text integration (WTI) can be challenging for second-language (L2) learners, although it can positively contribute to reading comprehension. The present study examined the role of WTI, after controlling for decoding, vocabulary and morphosyntactic awareness, in predicting English as an L2 reading comprehension development in…

Background: The increasing capabilities of generative artificial intelligence (AI), exemplified by OpenAI's transformer-based language model GPT-4 (ChatGPT), have drawn attention to its application in educational contexts. This study evaluates the potential of such models in generating German reading comprehension texts for educational large-scale…

This study examines context effects on lexical processing by low-proficiency Japanese learners of English during sentence comprehension, and the role of individual differences in verbal working memory (WM). Thirty Japanese learners of English as a second language (L2) and 27 speakers of English as a first language (L1) were recruited for a…

As intelligent textbooks become more ubiquitous in classrooms and educational settings, the need to make them more interactive arises. An alternative is to ask students to generate knowledge in response to textbook content and provide feedback about the produced knowledge. This study develops Natural Language Processing models to automatically…