This article considers the role of reader characteristics in processing and learning from informational text, as revealed in think-aloud research. A theoretical framework for relevant aspects of readers' processing and products was developed. These relevant aspects included three attentional foci for processing (comprehension, monitoring, and…

Explores adolescent readers' responses to the opening chapters of three African novels written by authors both within and outside the cultures described. Finds students were most satisfied with texts in which the unfamiliar culture was presented as "normal" and not obviously translated for them; students responded positively when differences…

The competition among relations in nominals (CARIN) theory of conceptual combination (C. L. Gagne & E. J. Shoben, 1997) proposes that people interpret nominal compounds by selecting a relation from a pool of competing alternatives and that relation availability is influenced by the frequency with which relations have been previously associated…

Klin et al., 2004 and Levine et al., 2000 concluded that readers fail to resolve noun phrase anaphors when the antecedent is difficult to retrieve from memory and the inference is not necessary for comprehension. In four experiments we investigated the hypothesis that these inferences were actually partially encoded. Although the results of a…

In recent years a number of reports have raised alarm over the deteriorating state of U.S. science and technology (S&T) competitiveness. But a recent report by the RAND Corporation, "U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology," argues that the U.S. continues to lead the world. RAND's report has been interpreted to suggest that the "clarion…

Recent studies have shown that under the influence of feminist theory, today one of the most popular areas of academic children's literature criticism is "the rereading of texts for previously unrevealed interpretations" (Paul, 2004: 142). By "rereading," academic feminist children's literature critics look at the ways ideological implications are…

In an age of continual technological advancement, user-friendly software, and consumer demand for the latest upgraded gadget, the ethical and moral discoveries derived from a careful reading of any fictional literature by college students is struggling in the American college classroom. Easy-access information systems, coinciding with the…

This interpretive study proposes a framework with which to explore the ethical significance of classroom-based literacy practices. Overly narrow views of literature as a source of role models or moral precepts take insufficient account of the complexity of text and experience. Through analyses of telling examples from student writing and…

The authors assert that L. B. Smith and L. Samuelson's (2006; see record EJ750228) most recent critique of A. E. Booth, S. R. Waxman, and Y. T. Huang's (2005; see record EJ684979) work missed its mark, deflecting attention from the important theoretical difference between the two sets of authors' positions and focusing instead on imagined…

Recently, transactional reader response theory has been criticized for providing an inadequate theoretical guide for the study of multicultural literature. Some scholars argue that Rosenblatt assumes the reader and her response to literature are ideologically innocent and the continuum of aesthetic and efferent stance does not encompass critical…

Counterintuitively, Y. Kareev, I. Lieberman, and M. Lev (1997) found that a lower short-term memory capacity benefits performance on a correlation detection task. They assumed that people with low short-term memory capacity (low spans) perceived the correlations as more extreme because they relied on smaller samples, which are known to exaggerate…

A decade ago, S. Aglioti, J. F. X. DeSouza, and M. A. Goodale (1995) published an experiment that has had a big influence on the way that visual information is thought to control human behavior. Their findings have often been simplified as suggesting that action is immune to perceptual illusions. The current authors critically analyze the 4 steps…

This article re-examines material discussed in a recent systematic research synthesis by Craven and Lee. The authors find that two of the interventions for foster children discussed by Craven and Lee were erroneously classified as supported by evidence of efficacy, and one, holding therapy, is shown to be potentially physically harmful to…

In their article, "Disconfirmation of the Predictive Validity of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire in a Sample of High-Risk Drug Offenders," criminologists Mitchell and MacKenzie (2006) purported to evaluate psychometric properties of the Self-Appraisal Questionnaire (SAQ), the first self-report risk/need measure estimating violent and nonviolent…

As study investigated the meaning-making processes of college freshmen as they interpreted and discussed poetry. Through the theory base of Reader-Response Theory and the New Rhetoric, students' individual construction of meaning and their social construction and negotiation of meaning, respectively, as they interpreted poems was studied. The…