ERIC Number: EJ1152116
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2017
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1088-8438
EISSN: N/A
Use of Contextual Information and Prediction by Struggling Adult Readers: Evidence from Reading Times and Event-Related Potentials
Ng, Shukhan; Payne, Brennan R.; Steen, Allison A.; Stine-Morrow, Elizabeth A. L.; Federmeier, Kara D.
Scientific Studies of Reading, v21 n5 p359-375 2017
We employed self-paced reading and event-related potential measures to investigate how adults of varying literacy levels use sentence context information when reading. Community-dwelling participants read strongly and weakly constraining sentences that ended with expected or unexpected target words. Skilled readers showed N400s that were graded by the cloze probability of the targets, with larger N400s for more unexpected words. Moreover, it took these participants longer to read unexpected targets in strongly than weakly constraining sentences, suggesting a processing cost for revising predictions. Among less skilled readers, a reliable N400 difference was found between expected and unexpected targets only for the strongly constraining sentences. They also took longer when targets were unexpected, regardless of the context. These findings suggest that lower literacy readers could only immediately take advantage of strongly constraining context information to facilitate word processing and that they do not make as much use of predictive processing during comprehension.
Descriptors: Pacing, Reading, Adults, Reading Difficulties, Reading Rate, Cognitive Measurement, Sentences, Adult Literacy, Adult Basic Education, Readability Formulas, Readability
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: Adult Basic Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Institute of Education Sciences (ED)
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Illinois
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Flesch Kincaid Grade Level Formula
IES Funded: Yes
Grant or Contract Numbers: R305A130448