Strategic Decisions in Task-Oriented Reading.

AbstractAnswering questions from texts are assessment and instructional activities that are frequently used in schools. Nevertheless, little is known about the strategic processes that students take while performing these tasks. We explored the amount and frequency that students initially read of a text before they answered questions pertaining to the material. In a procedure similar to the one used in the PISA (Program for International Students Assessment), one-hundred-seventy students between 7thand 9thgrade read and answered several questions designed to assess task-oriented reading in three specific texts. We recorded on-line indexes that evaluated student behavior (e.g., the amount of…

Selecting information to answer questions: Strategic individual differences when searching texts

The purpose of the study was to explore students’ selection of information strategies in a task-oriented reading situation. 72 secondary school students read two texts and answered six questions per text, three of which were manipulated to induce a misleading matching between the wording of the question and distracting pieces of information in the text. The reading and question-answering were presented with the software Read&Answer. We analyzed how skilled and less-skilled comprehenders were attracted to the distracting pieces of information and how this affected reading patterns and task outcomes. Skilled comprehenders scored higher and were able to discard the distracting information. In …

Some good texts are always better: text revision to foster inferences of readers with high and low prior background knowledge

Abstract This paper presents two experiments testing whether an approach to revise a text that fosters the reader's active processing benefits both high and low-knowledge readers. A history text and two alternative revised versions, one fostering the reader's inferential activity and the other reducing it, were employed. Junior high school students with low and high background knowledge about information related to the text topic participated in experiment 1, whereas undergraduate students with low and high knowledge on both the text topic and related information participated in experiment 2. One-third of the students for each condition in both experiments read either the original passage o…

Does formative feedback on search behaviour help students in answering comprehension questions from an available text? / ¿Ayuda la retroalimentación formativa sobre el comportamiento de búsqueda a contestar preguntas de comprensión en lecturas con texto disponible?

AbstractThis study analyses the efficacy of formative feedback to boost students’ search behaviour when answering comprehension questions in a with-text reading situation, which is a common reading situation in instructional and assessment settings. In these reading situations search strategies play an important role to predict students’ performance. Sixty-five high school students read two texts and answered eight multiple-choice comprehension questions per text using the software Read&Answer, which recorded all the students’ actions. After answering each question, students received either global-search-feedback or specific-search-feedback, which differed in the specificity of their inform…

ComparaciÓn de dos procedimientos de instrucciÓn en comprensiÓn y aprendizaje de textos: instrucciÓn directa y enseñanza recíproca

ResumenEl presente trabajo compara dos procedimientos para ensenar estrategias de comprensiOn y aprendizaje de textos. Estos dos procedimientOs difieren en el grado de participaciOn que los estudiantes tienen en el proceso de ensenanza. Se seleccionaron 21 ninos de 5° de E.G.B. sin dificultades de acceso lexico pero con baja comprensiOn lectora, los cuales fueron asignados aleatoriamente a tres grupos: instrucciOn directa, ensenanza reciproca y control. Se tomaron tres tipos de medidas para evaluar efectos directos e indirectos: median estrategias incluidas en ambos programas, en uno sOlo de ellos y no incluidas en ninguno de los dos con intenciOn de valorar el grado de generalizaciOn de lo…

Papel de los procesos metacognitivos en una tarea de pregunta-respuesta contextos escritos

ResumenEste estudio analiza el papel de medidas metacognitivas de monitorizacion y auto-regulacion del proceso de contestar a preguntas de un texto, asi como su contribucion para explicar las diferencias individuales mas alla de la explicacion proporcionada por una medida general de comprension lectora. Estudiantes de secundaria leyeron dos textos y contestaron preguntas, la mitad de las cuales contenia una contradiccion interna. La deteccion de la contradiccion fue utilizada para medir la monitorizacion de la comprension de las preguntas. Los estudiantes realizaban la tarea en un ordenador que registraba el tiempo y secuencia de lectura, lo que permitio medir procesos de auto-regulacion du…

Un programa para la enseñanza de la comprensión de ideas principales de textos expositivos

ResumenEste articulo presenta una investigacion llevada a cabo con ninos de 5.° curso de EG B (11 anos) los cuales fueron instruidos en la captacion de ideas prinapales de textos expositivos con estructura enumerativa y comparativa, y en la formation de la macroestructura textual. Un grupo de ninos de un colegio fueron entrenados con una metodologia de instruccion directa mientras otro grupo equivalente de un centro distinto sirvio como grupo de control. Se tomaron tres tipos de medidas dependientes tras la lectura de diversos textos con un diseno pretest- postest incluyendo cada uno de ellos varias pruebas. El primer tipo de medidas se referia a la captacion de ideas prinapales mientras el…

Adaptive formative feedback to improve strategic search decisions in task-oriented reading

This study analyses the effectiveness of adaptive formative feedback to boost strategic search decisions and performance when students are asked to answer a set of questions in a task-oriented reading situation. We compared automatic feedback that included information about the right answer with feedback that also included the connection between the students' strategic search decisions and their performance. Ninety-two high school students read two non-continuous texts. They received feedback during a training phase, and then they read and also received feedback with a similar text in a final phase. Text and questions were presented using a new computer-based technology that provided automa…

Efectos de las adaptaciones textuales, el conocimiento previo y las estrategias de estudio en el recuerdo, la comprensión y el aprendizaje de textos científicos

ResumenEste estudio analiza la influencia de diversos cambios textuales, del conocimiento previo de las estrategias de estudio en el recuerdo, comprension y aprendizaje de textos cientificos. Empleamos un diseno factorial 2×2 con dos variables entre sujetos, texto y estrategias de estudio, y la variable conocimiento previo anidada bajo la variable estrategias. Universitarios de Fisica y Psicologia, y bachilleres de ciencias y letras leyeron una de las dos versiones de un texto tomado de un libro de Fisica-Quimica de Bachillerato. En una version se hicieron cambios para facilitar la formacion del texto-base y facilitar la construccion de un modelo situational. Se tomaron tres medidas dependi…

Teaching self-regulation strategies via an intelligent tutoring system (TuinLECweb): Effects for low-skilled comprehenders

Is attribution retraining necessary? Use of self-regulation procedures for enhancing the reading comprehension strategies of children with learning disabilities

The present study investigates the need to include explicit attribution retraining in a program designed to teach reading comprehension strategies to children with learning disabilities (LD). The program had two versions: (a) self-regulation procedures and (b) self-regulation procedures plus explicit attributional retraining. Sixty children with LD were assigned to two training groups (with and without attributional retraining) and a control group. Twenty normally achieving students served as an additional control group. The effects were assessed via attribution measures and cognitive and metacognitive reading comprehension tests. Results indicated that children from both training groups i…

Search and Comprehension Processes in Learning from Text

We analyzed the relationships between comprehension skill and search strategies in instructional text. In two experiments, college-level readers were asked to search a computer-presented science text in order to answer different types of questions. High level questions required the integration of information across paragraphs, whereas low level questions requested the localization of information within a single paragraph. High level questions were re-read more often and they resulted in broader text search patterns. Furthermore, students who were diagnosed as good comprehenders located relevant sections of the text faster and spent more time on those sections. Poor comprehenders, on the oth…

Selection Task and Computer-Based Feedback to Improve the Searching Process in Task-Oriented Reading Situations

Adaptive feedback has showed to be effective to enhance strategic reading behaviors and performance in task-oriented reading situations, but it is difficult to be implemented in classroom environments. Computer-based systems allow overcoming these challenges. We conducted an experiment in which secondary-school students read two texts, answered comprehension questions and selected relevant text information while receiving automatic feedback about selection accuracy and performance. Two experimental conditions were designed to assess the effects of feedback and selection attempts. Then, students perform a transfer task without any of these elements. We found that one-attempt and two-attempt …

Impact of question-answering tasks on search processes and reading comprehension

Abstract This study examined the effect of (a) high- and low-level questions and (b) reading the text before the questions asked on performance, delayed text recall, and deep text comprehension, as well as on specific text-inspection patterns. Participants were 37 undergraduate students who answered either high- or low-level questions using the software Read&Answer to read and answer questions on the computer screen. Additionally, half of the sample read first a text and then answered the questions (reading-first condition), whereas the other half answered the questions without having read the text in advance (no-reading-first condition). All participants had the text available to search fo…

Estrategias de selección de información en tareas de contestación a preguntas

ResumenEl objetivo del estudio fue investigar las estrategias de seleccion de informacion de estudiantes de secundaria en una situacion de lectura orientada a tareas. Treinta seis estudiantes leyeron dos textos y contestaron seis preguntas por texto, tres de las cuales habian sido manipuladas para inducir un falso emparejamiento de palabras entre el enunciado de la pregunta y localizaciones erroneas del texto. Analizamos si los estudiantes con buen y peor nivel de comprension contestarian con exito las preguntas y si copiarian informacion erronea a partir de un falso emparejamiento de palabras. Los estudiantes con buen nivel de comprension puntuaron mejor en preguntas y aquellos con peores …

Evaluación de las estrategias y procesos de comprensión: el Test de Procesos de Comprensión

En este trabajo se presenta un nuevo test de evaluacion de la comprension lectora llamado Test de Procesos de Comprension (TPC) que, a diferencia de la mayoria de los test en espanol actuales, esta...

Individual differences for self-regulating task-oriented reading activities.

The goal of this study is to analyze the self-regulation processes present in task-oriented reading activities. In the 1st experiment, we examined the following self-regulation processes in the context of answering questions about an available text: (a) monitoring the comprehension of the question, (b) self-regulating the search process, and (c) monitoring the decision to search. Skilled and less skilled comprehenders from 7th and 8th grades read 2 texts and answered 16 questions while all their actions were recorded on a computer. We hypothesized that skilled comprehenders would differ from less skilled comprehenders on the 1st 2 processes on the basis of their general comprehension skills…

Impact of text availability and question format on reading comprehension processes

Abstract We conducted two experiments to analyze how text availability and question format affect readers’ processes and performance on measures of expository text reading comprehension. Junior high school students read expository texts and answered both multiple choice and open-ended questions on a computer that recorded reading times and readers’ actions with Read&Answer software. The results showed that readers reread prior text segments during initial reading of the text more often when they knew that the text would be unavailable when answering questions than when they knew that the text would be available. In addition, readers made more search decisions in the text- available conditio…

Formative feedback to transfer self-regulation of task-oriented reading strategies

The study includes two experiments to analyse the effects of automatic formative feedback designed to promote the transfer of self-regulation of strategic decisions in task-oriented reading e.g. answering questions from an available text. Secondary-school students read and answered multiple-choice comprehension questions from two texts having them available while receiving consistent feedback about their performance and strategic decisions. Then, they read a different text and answered questions also with the text available, but receiving no feedback. In Experiment 1, we tested two feedback procedures that differed in task conditions and the feedback information associated to these conditio…

Read&Answer, A Tool to Capture on-Line Processing of Electronic Texts

This paper is aimed at presenting Read&Answer, a tool that records reading times, one of the main on-line methods employed in text processing research. Read&Answer allows the recording, analysis and interpretation of the learner processing in order to test specific hypotheses and explain final comprehension results. First, we will describe the tool, and then we will briefly explain some research studies using the tool. We will show how Read&Answer can be used in combination with another on-line method extensively employed in text processing research, i.e., verbal protocols, and we will also compare Read&Answer with eye movement tracking, a widely accepted on-line reading times technique.

Delaying elaborated feedback within computer‐based learning environments: The role of summative and question‐based feedback

Summary versus argument tasks when working with multiple documents: Which is better for whom?

Abstract This article reports on two experiments where undergraduates read five documents on a scientific topic and afterwards answered comprehension questions and wrote either summaries or argument essays on the topic. In the first experiment, students who were instructed to work with the documents for the purpose of summarizing their contents displayed better comprehension and integration of document contents than did students instructed to construct arguments from the documents. In the second experiment, focusing on whether the effects of task instructions on multiple-documents comprehension and integration could be moderated by students’ prior knowledge, it was found that only students …

How to assist the students while learning from text? Effects of inserting adjunct questions on text processing

AbstractThis study analyzes the effect of text-inserted questions and post-text-reading questions, i.e., questions timing, on students’ processing and learning when studying challenging texts. Seventy-six freshmen read two science texts and answered ten adjunct questions with the text available, being tested on learning 5 days afterwards. Questions were presented either after reading the whole text or inserted in the text after reading the relevant information. Online processing data were recorded while reading and searching the texts, and measures of processing strategies (i.e., paraphrases, elaborations) while answering the questions were collected. Compared to students in the post-readin…

The development of adolescents' comprehension-based Internet reading activities

Abstract Internet-based reading involves integration and evaluation of information from different sources and different formats, but also requires fluent navigation skills for adequate comprehension. The effects of linguistic (word decoding and comprehension-based print reading) and non-cognitive factors (reading frequency and self-efficacy) have extensively been studied for print reading; we know very little about their role in Internet reading, which is our focus in this study. 558 students from grades 7 to 10 performed a set of comprehension-based Internet reading tasks on a computer, while their navigation and comprehension scores were recorded. They were also assessed on print reading …

Understanding and Integrating Multiple Science Texts: Summary Tasks are Sometimes Better Than Argument Tasks

One of the major challenges of a knowledge society is that students as well as other citizens must learn to understand and integrate information from multiple textual sources. Still, task and reader characteristics that may facilitate or constrain such intertextual processes are not well understood by researchers. In this study, we compare the effects of summary and argument essay tasks when undergraduates read seven different texts on a particular scientific topic, finding that an instruction to write summaries may lead to better understanding and integration than an instruction to write argument essays. We discuss several possible explanations for this result. We also found that beliefs a…

Importancia de las destrezas de procesamiento de la información en la comprensión de textos científicos

ResumenSe pretendio probar que algunos obstaculos en la comprension de las ciencias no estan causados por esquemas conceptuales alternativos, sino por deficiencias en los niveles de comprension lectora y de control de la propia comprension de los estudiantes Se midieron esos niveles y se controlaron las ideas alternativas en dos muestras de estudiantes de 4° de ESO. Los alumnos leyeron un texto experimental sobre Evolucion de las Especies y respondieron cuestiones consultando el texto a voluntad. Se predijeron diferencias claras en las respuestas segun los niveles de comprension lectora y control de la comprension, pero no debidas a esquemas conceptuales lamarckianos. Los resultados confirm…

Bridging Skill and Task-Oriented Reading

Some individual difference factors are more strongly correlated with performance on postreading questions when the text is not available than when it is. The present study explores if similar interactions occur with bridging skill, which refers to a reader's propensity to establish connections between explicit text during reading. Undergraduates read science texts using two research tools. The Reading Strategy-Assessment Tool provided a measure of bridging skill. Texts and postreading questions were presented in Read&Answer, and the availability of the text while answering was manipulated. Contrary to prior research, bridging skill was comparably correlated with performance in both availabi…

ETAT: Expository Text Analysis Tool.

Qualitative methods that analyze the coherence of expository texts not only are time consuming, but also present challenges in collecting data on coding reliability. We describe software that analyzes expository texts more rapidly and produces a notable level of objectivity. ETAT (Expository Text Analysis Tool) analyzes the coherence of expository texts. ETAT adopts a symbolic representational system, known as conceptual graph structures. ETAT follows three steps: segmentation of a text into nodes, classification of the unidentified nodes, and linking the nodes with relational arcs. ETAT automatically constructs a graph in the form of nodes and their interrelationships, along with various a…

Diferencias entre estudiantes con alta y baja competencia lectora: un estudio con metodología de pensar en voz alta

ResumenEl estudio analiza las diferencias entre estudiantes con alta y baja capacidad de comprension cuando realizan una tarea tipica de competencia lectora tal como responder preguntas de un texto pudiendo usar el texto para responder. Estudiantes de 1°-2° de ESO leyeron un texto y pensaron en voz alta mientras respondian 8 preguntas, pudiendo releer el texto para responder. A fin de entender sus decisiones de relectura, se pidio a los estudiantes que hicieran un Juicio de Aprendizaje (JOL) sobre su seguridad de dar una buena respuesta si no pudieran consultar el texto antes de contestar cada pregunta. Los resultados muestran que los estudiantes con alta comprension se diferencian de los d…

On-line assessment of comprehension processes

In this paper we describe a new version of a former paper-and-pencil standardized comprehension test called Test of Comprehension Processes (Vidal-Abarca, Gilabert, Martínez, & Sellés, 2007). The new version has been adapted to a computer-based environment based on the moving window technique. It can be used to assess comprehension strategies of students from fifth to tenth grades (11 to 16 years old). Comprehension strategies are registered on-line using reading times and visits to relevant sections of the text during the question-answering process. Data show that the computerbased version draws similar results to those provided by the paper-and-pencil version. In addition, we identify the…

Self-Generated Explanations on the Question Demands are not Always Helpful

AbstractThis study had two main purposes. First, to measure high-school students’ task model representation under the instruction to self-explain questions; second, to test the effects of self-generated explanations on task-demands understanding and performance on questions. We designed a simple experimental situation where high-school students were asked to read two texts and answer questions. Only in half of the questions students were required to self-explain with their own words what the question was asking them for before answering. Contrary to our expectations, self-explaining the questions did not significantly affect skilled comprehenders, whereas it hindered performance in less-ski…

Online assessment of strategic reading literacy skills

This study investigates the possibility of assessing strategic reading literacy skills with computers. The critical value of this assessment is the recording of online indices of the reader's behavior that can be interpreted in terms of strategies. The study uses materials of a standardized paper-and-pencil reading literacy test called CompLEC (Llorens et?al., 2011) and a technology called Read&Answer (Vidal-Abarca et?al., 2011) that presents texts and questions with a masking procedure that allows the recording of reading time and readers' actions to develop a computer-based version called e-CompLEC. We found that reliability and validity of the two versions are largely equivalent, and tha…

Una propuesta para hacer buenos textos expositivos: hacia una tecnología del texto expositivo

ResumenPresentamos una propuesta de tecnologia del texto expositivo fundamentada en los conocimientos de la psicologia de la comprension de textos. La propuesta esta basada en conjuntos de datos. Primeramente, el analisis de versiones originales y mejoradas de textos procedentes de estudios de revision de textos publicados en revistas internacionales utilizando una herramienta denominada Expository Text Analysis Tool (ETAT). En segundo lugar, en un experimento en el que estudiantes de 1° de Bachillerato leyeron un texto de Biologia en una de las dos versiones, original y mejorada siguiendo las pautas de la propuesta, y contestaron a diversas preguntas de comprension. Los resultados de ambos…

Levels of comprehension of scientific prose: the role of text variables

Abstract This research investigates the role played on shallow and deep levels of comprehension by textual changes that are aimed at: (a) improving the relationships within text ideas, and (b) producing better links between text ideas and the reader's knowledge. Four versions of a long physics passage were elaborated combining both kinds of textual changes. Four groups of tenth graders were each given one of the four versions. Different measures representative of these levels of comprehension were taken: getting main ideas, recall, and problem solving. The results indicated that: (a) main idea performance was affected by improving the relationships within text ideas, (b) both textual change…

Mapas de ideas: una herramienta para el aprendizaje escolar. Datos y comentarios para una discusión

Desde los estudios que tratan de llevar la «espacialidad del pensamiento» al propio pensamiento y aprendizaje verbal, el «mapa de ideas» ha ido difundiendose entre los educadores como una alternativa potente y facil de usar para estructurar y representar los conocimientos en ese lenguaje mixto grafico-verbal. Se describe aqui con detalle la tecnica y un ejemplo concreto de aplicacion.

The effects of tasks on integrating information from multiple documents.

The authors examine 2 issues: (a) how students integrate information from multiple scientific documents to describe and explain a physical phenomenon that represents a subset of the information in the documents; and (b) the role of 2 sorts of tasks to achieve this type of integration, either writing an essay on a question requiring integration across texts or answering shorter intratext questions that require students to integrate information within a single text, while superficial and deep comprehension measurements are obtained. Undergraduate students answered 1 of the 2 types of questions, and their reading times were recorded. Half of the sample thought aloud. Results showed that the in…

Children Like Dense Neighborhoods: Orthographic Neighborhood Density Effects in Novel Readers

Previous evidence with English beginning readers suggests that some orthographic effects, such as the orthographic neighborhood density effects, could be stronger for children than for adults. Particularly, children respond more accurately to words with many orthographic neighbors than to words with few neighbors. The magnitude of the effects for children is much higher than for adults, and some researchers have proposed that these effects could be progressively modulated according to reading expertise. The present paper explores in depth how children from 1stto 6thgrade perform a lexical decision with words that are from dense or sparse orthographic neighborhoods, attending not only to acc…

Eficacia de tomar notas para integrar información de varios textos

Resumen tomado de la publicación Se analiza el efecto de tomar notas para integrar información de varios documentos científicos. Estudiantes universitarios leyeron cuatro textos científicos para elaborar un ensayo sobre un tema común a los cuatro textos. La mitad de los estudiantes pudieron tomar notas mientras leían así como usarlas para elaborar el ensayo, mientras la otra mitad no pudieron. La tarea fue realizada en un ordenador de forma que se registro la secuencia de acciones de cada participante. La eficacia de la integración se midió mediante algunos índices de calidad de ensayo y dos medidas adicionales de aprendizaje. Los resultados indicaron que los alumnos que no tomaron notas ap…

Effects of timing of formative feedback in computer‐assisted learning environments

Teaching strategies to create visual representations of key ideas in content area text materials: A longterm intervention inserted in school curriculum

This paper describes a long-term research in which middle-grade school children were taught how to represent visually text key ideas through idea-mapping techniques. It consists of three studies, one for each year of our research. Children were at sixth grade when the instruction began, and they were at eighth grade when it finished. Another group of children from a different public school served as control group. Instruction was very close to the real school conditions: instructors were ordinary teachers, instruction was inserted in the content area curriculum, and ordinary textbooks were regularly employed, though combined with specially elaborated materials. Results were positive in the …