RESUMEN

The present investigation deals with individual differences in habitual (trait-level) mind wandering and their effects on learning. We hypothesized that the 'positive-constructive' type of habitual mind wandering would promote task-related thinking and the 'poor-attention' type to promote task-unrelated thinking. This hypothesis was tested in a study with 200 participants who rated different aspects of their mind wandering in daily life in one session and completed a reading study in a second session. The reading study included thought probes, retrospective questions about readers' thought contents, and comprehension tests after reading. In line with our hypothesis, data analysis revealed that some forms of positive-constructive mind wandering were positively associated with text-related thought, whereas poor-attention mind wandering was positively associated with text-unrelated thought. The present results add to the literature by emphasizing different types of trait-level mind wandering and their potentially opposite effects on learning.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Comprehension monitoring is a meta-cognitive skill that is defined as the ability to self-evaluate one's comprehension of text. Although it is known that struggling adult readers are poor at monitoring their comprehension, additional research is needed to understand the mechanisms underlying comprehension monitoring and their role in reading comprehension in this population. This study used a comprehension monitoring task with struggling adult readers, which included online eye movements (reread and regression path durations) and an offline verbal protocol (oral explanations of key information). We examined whether eye movements predicted accuracy on the passages' reading comprehension questions, a norm-referenced reading assessment, and an offline verbal protocol after controlling for age and traditional component skills (i.e., decoding, oral language, working memory). Regression path duration uniquely predicted accuracy on the questions; however, decoding and oral vocabulary were the most salient predictors of the norm-referenced reading comprehension measure. Regression path duration also predicted the offline verbal protocol, such that those who exhibited longer regression path duration were also better at explaining key information. These results contribute to the literature regarding struggling adults' reading component skills, eye movement behaviors involved in processing connected text, and future considerations in assessing comprehension monitoring.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

In this chapter, major trends in the development of metacognitive competences and its relationship to various aspects of cognitive/academic performance are described, with a focus on metamemory and reading comprehension. In a first step, classic and more recent theoretical models of metacognitive competences are presented that elaborate on the development of the declarative and procedural components of metacognition. The declarative component focuses on explicit and verbalizable knowledge, whereas the procedural component deals with monitoring and self-regulation processes. Common measures of both components are presented next, followed by a description of major developmental trends, as indicated by cross-sectional and longitudinal studies on developmental differences and changes in declarative knowledge, memory and comprehension monitoring, and self-regulation. Furthermore, research findings illustrating the relationship between metacognitive competences and cognitive performance in childhood and adolescence are presented for the domains of memory and reading comprehension, respectively. The final section focuses on educational implications of research on metacognition, underlining the importance of teacher behavior in the classroom and special instruction programs for students' acquisition of metacognitive competences.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

This study examined how vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and orthographic knowledge are related to comprehension monitoring and whether comprehension monitoring mediates the relations between these language skills and reading comprehension. Eighty-nine Chinese children were assessed on their vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, orthographic knowledge, and comprehension monitoring in Grade 1. Their reading comprehension skills were assessed in Grade 1 and Grade 3. Results showed that in Grade 1, comprehension monitoring mediated the relations between vocabulary and syntactic knowledge and reading comprehension. For Grade 3 reading comprehension, syntactic knowledge in Grade 1 was the only significant predictor. These findings indicate that multiple language skills make direct and indirect contributions via comprehension monitoring to Chinese reading comprehension, and the relations would change as children's reading skills develop.

RESUMEN

Inference generation and comprehension monitoring are essential elements of successful reading comprehension. While both improve with age and reading development, little is known about when and how children make inferences and monitor their comprehension during the reading process itself. Over two experiments, we monitored the eye movements of two groups of children (age 8-13 years) as they read short passages and answered questions that tapped local (Experiment 1) and global (Experiment 2) inferences. To tap comprehension monitoring, the passages contained target words which were consistent or inconsistent with the context. Comprehension question location was also manipulated with the question appearing before or after the passage. Children made local inferences during reading, but the evidence was less clear for global inferences. Children were sensitive to inconsistencies that relied on the generation of an inference, consistent with successful comprehension monitoring, although this was seen only very late in the eye movement record. Although question location had a large effect on reading times, it had no effect on global comprehension in one experiment and reading the question first had a detrimental effect in the other. We conclude that children appear to prioritise efficiency over completeness when reading, generating inferences spontaneously only when they are necessary for establishing a coherent representation of the text.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Poor reading comprehension may be due to having ineffective comprehension monitoring, the metacognitive process of evaluating and regulating comprehension. When comprehension breaks down due to an inconsistency either at the word-level (e.g., due to an unfamiliar word) or at the sentence-level (e.g., due to contradictory information), readers may identify the misunderstanding and take steps to regulate their comprehension. In the current study, we utilized two eye-movement tasks (one newly developed) to examine comprehension monitoring in third through fifth grade students (n = 123), when confronted with word- and sentence-level inconsistencies, by measuring the amount of time they read (gaze duration) and reread the target inconsistent words. We investigated how this skill may be associated with individual differences in age, reading comprehension ability, and vocabulary knowledge. The results showed that generally, all students detected the word-level inconsistencies, indicated by longer gaze durations, and attempted to regulate their comprehension after detecting both word- and sentence-level inconsistencies, as indicated by more time spent rereading. Students with stronger reading comprehension (when controlling for their vocabulary), and stronger vocabulary knowledge (when controlling for their reading comprehension) were more likely to attempt regulating their comprehension. In general, the difference between the control words and the inconsistent words was smaller for third graders and larger for fourth and fifth graders, which we argue indicates greater levels of comprehension monitoring - specifically employing repair strategies. With eye-tracking technology becoming more accessible, these tasks may be useful in assessing children's reading processes to better understand at which level of comprehension monitoring they may be struggling, which in return will allow us to develop more individualized instruction for all readers.

RESUMEN

The goal was to investigate the nature of online comprehension monitoring, its predictors, and its relation to reading comprehension. Questions were concerned with (1) beginning readers' sensitivity to inconsistencies, (2) predictors of online comprehension monitoring, and (3) the relation of online comprehension monitoring to reading comprehension over and above word reading and listening comprehension. Using eye-tracking technology, online comprehension monitoring was measured as the amount of time spent rereading target implausible words and looking back at surrounding contexts. Results from 319 second graders revealed that children spent greater time fixating on inconsistent than consistent words and engaged in more frequent lookbacks. Comprehension monitoring was explained by both word reading and listening comprehension. However, comprehension monitoring did not uniquely predict reading comprehension after accounting for word reading and listening comprehension. These results provide insight into the nature of comprehension monitoring and its role in reading comprehension for beginning readers.

RESUMEN

In two eye tracking experiments, we tested fourth graders' and adults' sensitivity to gender feature mismatches during reading of pronouns and their susceptibility to interference of feature-matching entities in the sentence. In Experiment 1, we showed children and adults two-phrase sentences such as "Leon{m}/Lisa{f} shooed away the sparrow{m}/the seagull{f} and then he{m} ate the tasty sandwich." Eye tracking measures showed no qualitative differences between children's and adults' processing of the pronouns. Both age groups showed longer gaze durations on subject mismatching than on matching pronouns, and there was no evidence of interference of a gender-matching object. Strikingly, in contrast to the adults, not all fourth graders reported detection of the subject gender mismatch. In Experiment 2, we replicated earlier results with a larger sample of children (N = 75) and found that only half of the fourth graders detected the gender mismatch during reading. The detectors' reading pattern at the pronoun differed from that of the non-detectors. Children who reported detection of the mismatch showed a reading pattern more similar to the adults. Children who did not report detection of the mismatch had comparably slower gaze durations and were less likely to make regressions directly at the pronoun. We conclude that children who read more fluently use their available processing resources to immediately repair grammatical inconsistencies encountered in a text.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Testing a component model of reading comprehension in a randomized controlled trial, we evaluated the efficacy of four different interventions that were designed to target components of language and metacognition that predict children's reading comprehension: vocabulary, listening comprehension, comprehension of literate language, academic knowledge, and comprehension monitoring. Third- and fourth-graders with language skills falling below age expectations participated (N = 645). Overall, the component interventions were only somewhat effective in improving the targeted skills, compared to a business-as-usual control (g ranged from -.14 to .33), and no main effects were significant after correcting for multiple comparisons. Effects did not generalize to other language skills or to students' reading comprehension. Moreover, there were child-characteristic-by-treatment interaction effects. For example, the intervention designed to build sensorimotor mental representations was more effective for children with weaker vocabulary skills. Implications for component models of reading and interventions for children at risk of reading comprehension difficulties are discussed.

RESUMEN

We investigated component language and cognitive skills of oral language comprehension of narrative texts (i.e., listening comprehension). Using the construction-integration model of text comprehension as an overarching theoretical framework, we examined direct and mediated relations of foundational cognitive skills (working memory and attention), foundational language skills (vocabulary and grammatical knowledge), and higher-order cognitive skills (inference, theory of mind, and comprehension monitoring) to listening comprehension. A total of 201 first grade children in South Korea participated in the study. Structural equation modeling results showed that listening comprehension is directly predicted by working memory, grammatical knowledge, inference, and theory of mind and is indirectly predicted by attention, vocabulary, and comprehension monitoring. The total effects were .46 for working memory, .07 for attention, .30 for vocabulary, .49 for grammatical knowledge, .31 for inference, .52 for theory of mind, and .18 for comprehension monitoring. These results suggest that multiple language and cognitive skills make contributions to listening comprehension, and their contributions are both direct and indirect.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

Narratives typically consist of information on multiple aspects of a situation. In order to successfully create a coherent representation of the described situation, readers are required to monitor all these situational dimensions during reading. However, little is known about whether these dimensions differ in the ease with which they can be monitored. In the present study, we examined whether children in Grades 4 and 6 monitor four different dimensions (i.e., emotion, causation, time, and space) during reading, using a self-paced reading task containing inconsistencies. Furthermore, to explore what causes failure in inconsistency detection, we differentiated between monitoring processes related to availability and validation of information by manipulating the distance between two pieces of conflicting information. The results indicated that the monitoring processes varied as a function of dimension. Children were able to validate emotional and causal information when it was still active in working memory, but this was not the case for temporal and spatial information. When context and target information were more distant from each other, only emotionally charged information remained available for further monitoring processes. These findings show that the influence of different situational dimensions should be taken into account when studying children's reading comprehension.

RESUMEN

Objective To compare the comprehension monitoring in reading between students with and without hearing impairment. Methods An error detection paradigm and an eye-movement recordings method were used in two samples of hearing impairment students and no-hearing impairment students with passages that contained inconsistencies with interval 2 sentences, 4 sentences, 6 sentences and 8 sentences. Results The scores of reading comprehension, the index of tradition monitoring and the index of eye movement were lower in the hearing impairment students than in the no-hearing impairment students (P<0.05). Conclusion The comprehension monitoring ability in reading is poor in the hearing impairment students.