Learning from texts means acquiring and applying knowledge, which requires students to judge their text comprehension accurately. However, students usually overestimate their comprehension, which can be caused by a misalignment between the cues used to judge one's comprehension and the cognitive requirements of future test questions. Therefore,…

Segmentation is a cornerstone of language processing across levels of linguistic analysis, and yet, standard models of linguistic memory leave the role of higher-order segments in online comprehension understudied. This dissertation advances the Context-Sensitive Encoding (CSE) hypothesis: that implicit prosodic boundaries (Bader, 1998; J. Fodor,…

Recently, several studies have suggested that metacognition emerges early in infancy and toddlerhood. However, to date, the developmental trajectory of these early metacognitive monitoring and control processes and their influence on children's later memory functioning remains poorly understood. The aim of this study was to longitudinally document…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of judgment frames, cues, and test criteria on the accuracy of metacomprehension monitoring. The design was a 2 (rating comprehension vs. predicting performance) × 2 (memory cues vs. comprehension cues) × 2 (detailed questions test vs. inferential questions test) mixed design with judgment frames and…

The authors examined the influence of context meaning consistency on incidental vocabulary acquisition during reading. "Context meaning consistency" refers to informational context that reflected the same meaning (i.e., consistent) or different meanings (i.e., inconsistent) across two self-paced reading sessions for a given item (both…

The study of word-to-text integration (WTI) provides a window on incremental processes that link the meaning of a word to the preceding text. We review a research program using event-related potential indicators of WTI at sentence beginnings, thus localizing sources of integration to prior text meaning independently of the current sentence. The…

Less skilled readers' comprehension often suffers because they have an impoverished representation of text in long-term memory; this, in turn, increases the difficulty of gaining access to backgrounded information necessary for maintaining coherence. The results of four experiments demonstrated that providing less skilled readers with additional…

In order for a person to comprehend metaphoric expressions, do metaphor-irrelevant aspects of literal information need to be inhibited? Previous research using sentence-verification paradigms has found that literal associates take longer to process after reading metaphorical sentences; however, it is problematic to infer inhibition from this…

Books designed for beginning readers typically intermix text with illustrations in close proximity. Prior research suggests this standard layout may reduce literacy skills due to increased attentional competition between text and illustrations. The current study extends this work by examining whether manipulations to the book layout can enhance…

We investigated relative clause (RC) comprehension in 44 Russian-speaking children with typical language (TD) and developmental language disorder (DLD) (M age = 10;67, SD = 2.84) and 22 adults. Flexible word order and morphological case in Russian allowed us to isolate factors that are obscured in English, helping us to identify sources of…

Several recent studies have shown that retrieval is more efficient than restudy in enhancing the long-term retention of memories. However, studies investigating this effect in children are still rare. Here, we report an experiment in which third-grade children initially read a brief encyclopaedic text twice and then either performed a cued recall…

It is estimated that nearly 70% of high school students in the United States need some form of reading remediation, with the most common need being the ability to comprehend the content and significance of the text (Biancarosa & Snow, 2004). Research findings support the use of visual imagery and keyword cues as effective comprehension…

Reading academic hypertext documents in college brings a new level of complexity that changes the definition of college reading and literacy. Knowing how to read these unpredictable, nonlinear texts requires familiarity and practice. The author describes the nature and usefulness of hypertext, reviews the challenges of reading hypertext, and…

Using the eye-movement monitoring technique in two reading comprehension experiments, this study investigated the timing of constraints on wh-dependencies (so-called island constraints) in first- and second-language (L1 and L2) sentence processing. The results show that both L1 and L2 speakers of English are sensitive to extraction islands during…

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…