Arithmetic word problems are a staple in mathematical curricula yet give individuals of all ages difficulty. Successful word problem solving requires translating the problem into a symbolic arithmetic format. However, the linguistic component may make problem solving more complex and increase cognitive load, specifically the processes that…

Rapid advances in technology are facilitating the electronic distribution of information, especially via auditory formats. These methods of acquiring information are prevalent in educational settings, such as the use of audiobooks. While auditory formats may be more convenient and economical, they may not be the most beneficial for comprehension…

We examine the role of culture in comprehension. Prominent theories of comprehension conceptualized the outcome of reading as learners' construction of a cognitive representation of texts. We emphasize that such representation reflects not only texts' content, but also individuals' understandings of the real world, as described in texts. We…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the direct and indirect relations between short-term memory (STM), reading, oral language, and writing at the letter, word, and discourse levels in young, developing writers both cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Method: Participants were 449 English-speaking kindergarten students (52% female)…

The Sentence Structure sub-test (SST) of the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (CELF) aims to "measure the acquisition of grammatical (structural) rules at the sentence level". Although originally designed for clinical practice with monolingual children, components of the CELF, such as the SST, are often used to inform…

This study investigated how and how often to present prompts to enhance students' source evaluation and multiple-text comprehension. Participants were 72 undergraduates who read a set of digital texts on a controversial topic of smartphone use and mental health, wrote a justification statement for their selection of trustworthy texts, and answered…

This pioneering book is now in a revised and expanded second edition featuring the latest neuroscientific knowledge and instructional strategies. Kelly B. Cartwright provides a teacher-friendly explanation of executive skills--such as planning, organization, cognitive flexibility, and impulse control--and their role in reading comprehension.…

Purpose: Lexical processing impairments such as delayed and reduced activation of lexical-semantic information have been linked to syntactic processing disruptions and sentence comprehension deficits in individuals with aphasia (IWAs). Lexical-level deficits can also preclude successful lexical encoding during sentence processing and amplify the…

Children from economically disadvantaged communities have a disproportionate risk of exposure to chemicals, social stress, and learning difficulties. Although animal models and epidemiologic studies link exposures and neurodevelopment, little focus has been paid to academic outcomes in environmental health studies. Similarly, in the educational…

The relationship between working memory (WM) and language processing has been extensively investigated in cognitive research. Previous studies mostly obtain evidence from measuring the involvement of WM in complex syntactic structures reported with well-established processing asymmetry, e.g., relative clauses (RCs) in English. Rarely considered is…

We investigated the association between thinking dispositions and two outcomes of multiple-texts comprehension: integration of conflicting information in argumentative essays; and recall of inferential information as an index of deep comprehension. We focused on two thinking dispositions, need for cognition (NFC) and actively open-minded thinking…

Mayer (2017, 2020) proposed three major design features of computer-assisted instructions (CAI) within the Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning: reducing extraneous processing (i.e., excluding irrelevant content), managing essential processing (i.e., focusing on the complex but essential learning materials), and fostering generative processing…

Holding learners' attention is challenging, especially when they are asked to listen to long passages. High-immersion virtual reality (VR) can immerse learners in listening tasks, even in such complex languages as Chinese. This exploratory study examined the effect of VR on 43 Chinese language learners' listening comprehension, enjoyment, sense of…

Psycholinguistic research aims to understand how people make sense of language in their everyday lives. However, most of this research studies language under experimental conditions in which people are instructed to specifically monitor (and indicate) when there is a breakdown in their understanding. Moreover, there is an assumption that people…

In sentence comprehension, negative sentences tend to elicit more processing cost than affirmative sentences. A growing body of work has shown that pragmatic context is an important factor that contributes to negation comprehension cost. The nature of this pragmatic effect, however, is yet to be determined. In 4 behavioral experiments, the current…