Assessing the Comprehension of Questions in Task-Oriented-Reading // Evaluación de la comprensión de las preguntas en lectura-orientada-a-tareas

El objetivo del estudio fue analizar una metodologia de evaluacion del modelo mental de tarea, en lectura-orientada-a-tareas. 66 estudiantes universitarios leyeron dos textos y contestaron preguntas. Para cada pregunta elaboramos un item sobre las demandas de la pregunta. Las alternativas de respuesta combinaban versiones correctas o erroneas de los componentes del modelo de pregunta; nucleo y proceso. Analizamos el formato de aplicacion, relacion con rendimiento, capacidad para discriminar entre niveles de comprension y funcionamiento psicometrico de los items. Cuando la evaluacion se aplico antes de responder, las puntuaciones mejoraron y se relacionaron con rendimiento. Esta aplicacion p…

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 …

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…

The role of perspective on students’ use of multiple documents to solve an openended Task

AbstractMcCrudden & Schraw (2007) show how students’ interaction with a text is mediated by the instructions they are presented with. Specifically, perspective instructions prompt readers to use background knowledge to evaluate text from an assigned point of view. Research on perspective in single texts has demonstrated that readers confer relevance on text segments that are consistent with the assigned perspective (Pichert & Anderson, 1977). This work has tested the effects of perspective when reading conflicting information from multiple documents to perform an open-ended task, as well as has studied if the trustworthiness of a source exerts any influence on students’ decision to use info…

How adolescents navigate Wikipedia to answer questions / ¿Cómo navegan los adolescentes en Wikipedia para contestar preguntas?

AbstractIn one experiment, we explored how high school students use hyperlink relevance cues while they navigate to answer questions from hypertexts. Current evidence has shown that students may navigate by either performing a deep semantic analysis of the relationship between the question and the existing hyperlinks, or by matching words in the question to words in the hyperlink labels. We focused on how students combine both cues during navigation, and how comprehension skills relate to the use of such cues. Our study revealed that 14 year old students (N = 53) selected hyperlinks by relying to a similar degree on both word matching and semantic overlap. Furthermore, when there was a conf…

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…

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…

READ-COGvid: A Database From Reading and Media Habits During COVID-19 Confinement in Spain and Italy

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…

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 …

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.

Introduction to the special issue ‘How adolescents read and learn on the Web: internal and external factors (Introducción al número especial ‘Cómo leen y aprenden los adolescentes en la red: factores internos y externos’)

The World Wide Web has become a major information resource for adolescents (i.e., 10–19 years of age), offering an unprecedented amount of information on virtually any topic. While the Web can pote...

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

Do you know what you are reading for? Exploring the effects of a task model enhancement on fifth graders' purposeful reading

International audience; Background: Drawing on theories of purposeful reading, this study explored task conditions that support fifth graders' selective reading of documents in order to answer questions. More specifically, we investigated whether promoting students' elaboration of their task model increases task performance. Methods: Participants had to answer series of questions by searching documents for the relevant information. Half the participants received a task model prompt, and half received a control prompt. Participants' eye movements were recorded during text search, in order to investigate more precisely the effect of an enhanced task model. Results: Participants provided more …

Cognitive Load and Learning in the Study of Multiple Documents

This study had two main purposes. First, to test how the availability of documents in multiple document reading might affect students’ levels of cognitive load. Secondly, to develop an instrument that captures the different sources of load when working with multiple documents. A total of 125 secondary school students read four short texts on transgenic foods and subsequently responded to an open-ended question that required them to write an essay expressing their personal stance towards the topic. Participants in the experimental treatment condition (n = 54) were allowed to go back to the texts any time during the essay task, whereas their peers in the control condition (n = 71) were not al…

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…

The Role of General and Selective Task Instructions on Students’ Processing of Multiple Conflicting Documents

This study was designed to test the role of general and selective task instructions when processing documents, which vary as regards trustworthiness and position toward a conflicting topic. With selective task instructions, we refer to concrete guidelines as how to read the texts and how to select appropriate documents and contents, in contrast to general task instructions. Sixty-one secondary school students were presented with four different conflicting documents in an electronic learning environment and were told to write an essay based on the information from the texts. Only half of the students were told to only use information from two out of the four texts to write their essay (i.e.,…

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…

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

Exploring fourth graders’ sourcing skills / Un análisis de la capacidad de escrutinio sobre las fuentes de información de los estudiantes de cuarto grado

Acquiring information from the Web creates new educational demands even in elementary school. Children need to scrutinize source information (‘sourcing’) to choose trustworthy information. So far, ...