Neural efficiency, adaptability, and synchronization, or the ability to recruit, dynamically modulate, and coordinate neural resources on an "as needed" basis, have been proposed as hallmarks of skilled reading. The current study explored the relation between these aspects of neural functioning during reading, as measured by…

How do infants learn about the formal properties of language using only cues they can access in speech? And what intuitions do they bring to the learning problem? Chapter 2: To explore whether current notions of statistically-based language learning could successfully scale to infants' linguistic experiences "in the wild", we implemented…

As handheld devices, such as tablets, become a common tool in schools, a critical and urgent question for the research community is to assess their potential impact on educational outcomes. Previous meta-analytic research has evidenced the "screen inferiority effect": Readers tend to understand texts slightly worse when reading on-screen…

International comparative measures show that South Africa has extremely low standards in reading. A variety of programmes aimed at boosting reading have been developed, however, the effectiveness of these programmes is unclear. Prior reviews of effective reading instruction practices have focused almost exclusively on learners whose first language…

Student question generation (SQG) is an effective strategy for improving reading comprehension. It helps students improve their understanding of reading materials, metacognitively monitor their comprehension, and self-correct comprehension gaps. Internet technologies have been used to facilitate SQG process through intensive peer support. However,…

There are conflicting reports not only on the effect of scientific inquiry on academic achievement but also insufficient evidence on the relationship between understanding the nature of scientific inquiry and academic achievement; more generalizable studies are needed. The purpose of this large sampled study was to investigate the middle school…

Numerous studies have examined the positive and negative effects of various types of interactions that occur while children view electronic book (e-book) stories. However, the effects of the different types of interactions have not been compared, and more importantly, the optimal amount and reoccurrence of these interactions on children has not…

A substantial quantity of research has explored whether readers' eye movements are sensitive to the distinction between function and content words. No clear answer has emerged, in part due to the difficulty of accounting for differences in length, frequency, and predictability between the words in the two classes. Based on evidence that readers…

In this paper, I discuss the inspiration, development, and further refinement of the Knowledge Revision Components framework (KReC; Kendeou & O'Brien, 2014). In KReC, we theorize about the conditions that facilitate knowledge revision during reading, and thus successful learning in the presence of prior, often incorrect knowledge. I discuss…

The introduction of statistical concepts into school curricula in Australia and New Zealand in the early 1990s initiated an ongoing research program into the learning and teaching of statistics and probability in both countries. This paper reviews the contribution of Australian and New Zealand researchers to building statistical literacy at…

Valid consent requires the potential research participant understands the information provided. We examined current practice in 50 proposed Clinical Trials of Investigational Medicinal Products to determine how this understanding is checked. The majority of the proposals (n = 44) indicated confirmation of understanding would take place during an…

Making inferences is essential to comprehending text. Teachers can ask inferential questions, model their thinking, and teach specific strategies to support upper elementary students in making inferences while reading.

Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are a common way to assess reading comprehension. Every MCQ needs a set of distractor answers that are incorrect, but plausible enough to test student knowledge. However, good distractors are hard to create. Distractor generation (DG) models have been proposed, and their performance is typically evaluated using…

Assessing students' answers and in particular natural language answers is a crucial challenge in the field of education. Advances in transformer-based models such as Large Language Models (LLMs), have led to significant progress in various natural language tasks. Nevertheless, amidst the growing trend of evaluating LLMs across diverse tasks,…

Many individuals with poor reading comprehension have levels of reading comprehension that are consistent with deficits in their ability to decode the words on the page. However, there are individuals who are poor at reading comprehension despite being adequate at decoding. This phenomenon is referred to as specific reading comprehension deficit…