This study aims at exploring gender differences in text-type-specific reading competences via readers' gender-specific reading preferences. Women were expected to read more often for the sake of entertainment (entertainment preference), whereas men were expected to read more often to gain information (information preference). We further assumed…

"Practice engagement theory" (PET) posits that individuals' literacy proficiencies develop as a by-product of their engagement in everyday reading and writing practices and, reciprocally, that literacy proficiencies affect levels of engagement in reading and writing practices. This suggests that literacy training which increases…

Reading self-concept is an important predictor of reading comprehension and vice versa. However, the mechanisms that are at work in this relation have yet to be identified. In line with the self-enhancement approach, we propose that in the reading domain, amount of reading, book choice (text difficulty and book length), and intrinsic reading…

Background: In the present paper, we investigated the association between time spent reading and reading comprehension throughout the lifespan. According to the Matthew effect (or rich-get-richer and poor-get-poorer) model, interindividual differences in reading-related skills between poor and average readers become wider as individuals grow…