Monitoring text comprehension: Individual differences in epistemological standards.

Examined individual differences in reading comprehension standards by asking 9 undergraduates enrolled in a "Fundamentals of Psychology" course to describe the criteria they used to decide whether or not they had comprehended textbook chapters. Ss were classified as having a dualistic (fact-oriented) or a relativistic (context-oriented) conception of knowledge on the basis of their ratings of attitude statements drawn from the work of W. G. Perry (1968). Comprehension criteria reported by dualists more often involved the knowledge category found in the B. S. Bloom et al (1956) book, Taxonomy, and those reported by relativists, the comprehension or application categories. The nature and number of reported comprehension criteria were found to be predictive of course grades. Ss reporting the use of comprehension or application criteria earned better grades than those reporting the use of knowledge criteria; Ss reporting the use of more than one criterion earned better grades than those reporting the use of a single criterion. These data suggest that one's epistemological beliefs may dictate one's choice of comprehension standards and that these epistemological standards, in turn, may control the effectiveness of one's text processing efforts. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age and individual differences influence prospective memory.

The influence of age and individual ability differences on event-based prospective memory was examined using an adapted version of G. 0. Einstein and M. A. McDaniel's (1990) task. Two samples of younger and older adults who differed in educational attainment, occupational status, and verbal ability were compared. Results yield comparable prospective performance for the younger groups and higher ability older adults; lower ability older adults performed more poorly by comparison. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that working memory span and recognition accounted for small but significant proportions of variance in prospective performance. The contribution of ability level to prospective memory remained significant even after statistically controlling for self-reported health and social activity characteristics. Implications for current views on prospective memory aging are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of strategies and individual differences in children's memory.

Examined interrelations among measures of memory to determine whether individual differences in children's performance on learning and memory tasks may be attributable to a general strategic factor. Correlations were computed among 3 strategy-based measures of memory and 3 strategy-free measures of memory for 108 8- and 11-yr-olds. Factor analyses of these correlation matrices revealed that only for 11-yr-olds did the 3 strategy-based measures load on a single factor, as would be expected if general strategic ability was a source of individual differences in children's memory. For both 8- and 11-yr-olds there was some evidence for the presence of a strategy-free factor. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reading comprehension: Developmental processes, individual differences, and interventions.

Research on the typical development of reading comprehension, individual differences in comprehension, and reading comprehension interventions is less common than research on word reading. The authors present an overview of research on the development of reading comprehension skills and sources of individual differences in comprehension with reference to cognitive models of comprehension. Methodological issues particular to developmental and individual difference research on comprehension are also described. The article ends with a selective review of research programmes that illustrate effective comprehension interventions for typically developing children and for children who struggle to understand what they read. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A capacity theory of comprehension: Individual differences in working memory.

A theory of the way working memory capacity constrains comprehension proposes that both processing and storage are mediated by activation and that the total amount of activation available in working memory varies among individuals. Individual differences in working memory capacity for language can account for qualitative and quantitative differences among college-age adults in several aspects of language comprehension. One aspect is syntactic modularity: The larger capacity of some individuals permits interaction among syntactic and pragmatic information, so that their syntactic processes are not informationally encapsulated. Another aspect is syntactic ambiguity: The larger capacity of some individuals permits them to maintain multiple interpretations. The theory is instantiated as a production system model in which the amount of activation available to the model affects how it adapts to the transient computational and storage demands that occur in comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and inhibitory control in text comprehension.

The degree to which inhibitory regulation is related to the initial perception of information or to the control of response tendencies was examined by asking participants to read paragraphs that included italicized, to-be-ignored words. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to begin vocalization of the italicized words and to make text comprehension errors involving the to-be-ignored information. However, younger adults were subsequently more likely to recognize the words they had apparently ignored, suggesting that inhibitory regulation controls selectivity in response rather than initial perception. Commonalities between inhibitory regulation and source monitoring paradigms are demonstrated, and discussion focuses on the degree to which on-line monitoring of goal-relevant response underlies age-related deficits in both domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in working memory and comprehension: A test of four hypotheses.

A relationship has consistently been found between measures of working memory and reading comprehension. Four hypotheses for this relationship were tested in 3 experiments. In the 1st 2 experiments, a moving window procedure was used to present the operation–word and reading span tasks. High- and low-span Ss did not differentially trade off time on the elements of the tasks and the to-be-remembered word. Furthermore, the correlation between span and comprehension was undiminished when the viewing times were partialed out. Exp 3 compared a traditional experimenter-paced simple word-span and an S-paced span in their relationship with comprehension. The experimenter-paced word-span correlated with comprehension, but the S-paced span did not. The results of all 3 experiments support a general capacity explanation for the relationship between working memory and comprehension. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Keyword and context instruction of new vocabulary meanings: Effects on text comprehension and memory.

New vocabulary was taught by one of three methods: keyword, semantic context, and no-strategy control. The semantic context method involved presenting subjects verbal contexts from which they might infer the meanings of the words, followed by explicit provision of the definitions. After a vocabulary definition acquisition phase, subjects in all conditions read a text in which some of the newly acquired vocabulary was embedded, with half of the texts providing richer contextual clues to the meaning of the target items (embellished text) than the other texts (unembellished text). Reading times did not differ as a function of acquisition condition, nor did one acquisition condition consistently elicit better performance than the others across text comprehension/memory measures. The one significant difference in comprehension favored the keyword method. The usual superiority of the keyword method for recall of definitions given vocabulary items was also replicated. Despite theoretically motivated concerns that keyword-method acquisition of definitions might inhibit comprehension of vocabulary in discourse relative to a semantic context method, none of the reaction time (RT) or performance analyses reported here supported those hypotheses. A subsidiary finding was that test text embellishments increased comprehension (as indexed by recall measures), a result suggesting that certain kinds of contextual support can enhance comprehension of "new" vocabulary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Cloze" readability scores as indices of individual differences in comprehension and aptitude.

In the "close procedure" the readability of a prose passage is measured by the number of deleted words readers correctly guess. To three test groups (Ns = 58), "easy," "hard" and "any" cloze passages were administered in a before-after design together with a knowledge pretest, and these data were related to AFQT scores. "Cloze" scores, knowledge test scores, and AFQT scores were all positively correlated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory capacity and categorization: Individual differences and modeling.

Working memory is crucial for many higher-level cognitive functions, ranging from mental arithmetic to reasoning and problem solving. Likewise, the ability to learn and categorize novel concepts forms an indispensable part of human cognition. However, very little is known about the relationship between working memory and categorization, and modeling in category learning has thus far been largely uninformed by knowledge about people's memory processes. This article reports a large study (N = 113) that related people's working memory capacity (WMC) to their category-learning performance using the 6 problem types of Shepard, Hovland, and Jenkins (1961). Structural equation modeling revealed a strong relationship between WMC and category learning, with a single latent variable accommodating performance on all 6 problems. A model of categorization (the Attention Learning COVEring map, ALCOVE; Kruschke, 1992) was fit to the individual data and a single latent variable was sufficient to capture the variation among associative learning parameters across all problems. The data and modeling suggest that working memory mediates category learning across a broad range of tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age, gender, and individual differences in memory failure appraisal.

Young adults (22 men and 24 women) and older adults (24 men and 24 women) rated 12 gender-neutral vignettes describing short-term, long-term, and very-long-term memory failures. Vignette target persons were young (aged 21–32 yrs) or older (aged 65–75 yrs) men or women. Ss of both age and gender groups used a double standard: Failures of older targets of both genders were rated as signifying greater mental difficulty than failures of young targets; failures of young targets were attributed to lack of effort and attention. Young Ss judged very-long-term failures more harshly than did older Ss. Ss' objective memory performance, self-rated memory failure frequency, memory failure discomfort, and depression made little difference in their target person ratings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Note-taking, individual differences, and memory for lecture information.

Investigated the encoding function of note taking and processing differences between successful and less successful students in lecture situations in 2 experiments. In Exp I, 48 undergraduates either took notes or listened during a lecture. Different memory patterns were found for these 2 groups, with note-takers recalling many more high- than low-importance propositions and listeners recalling an equal number of high- and low-importance propositions. Results suggest that note taking enhanced organizational processing of lecture information. In Exp II, the notes and recall of 80 successful and less successful students were compared. Successful Ss recalled more of the most important propositions, but these 2 groups of Ss did not differ in their recall of less important propositions. For both groups of Ss, recall content was closely related to the content of the notes, with successful Ss recording more high-importance propositions in their notes. Also, successful and less successful Ss were similar in their note-taking styles and the degree to which they benefited from reviewing their notes. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and individual differences in the development of skilled memory search performance.

We examined individual differences in measures of multiple intellectual abilities and performance on a pure memory search task over 5 experimental sessions. Old (n?=?104) and young (n?=?97) participants showed expected patterns of substantial improvement in memory search intercepts and slopes in consistently mapped (CM) conditions, relative to varied mapping (VM) conditions. Initial (unskilled) CM and VM memory search was highly correlated with a Semantic Memory Access Speed factor and moderately correlated with General Intelligence. Structural equation models showed that measures of Semantic Memory Access remained a strong predictor of skilled CM search performance in both age groups despite individual differences in CM memory search performance changes. These results indicate qualitative differences in the nature of automaticity between memory search and visual search and suggest age invariance in the mechanisms determining automaticity in memory search. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension.

Describes a constructionist theory that accounts for the knowledge-based inferences that are constructed when readers comprehend narrative text. Readers potentially generate a rich variety of inferences when they construct a referential situation model of what the text is about. The proposed constructionist theory specifies that some, but not all, of this information is constructed under most conditions of comprehension. The distinctive assumptions of the constructionist theory embrace a principle of search (or effort) after meaning. According to this principle, readers attempt to construct a meaning representation that addresses the reader's goals, that is coherent at both local and global levels, and that explains why actions, events, and states are mentioned in the text. This study reviews empirical evidence that addresses this theory and contrasts it with alternative theoretical frameworks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Language comprehension and probe-list memory.

Experiments were performed using probe-word recognition methodology in which participants read sentences that were presented 1 word at a time and were then shown a probe word and had to make a speeded response indicating whether the word had occurred in the sentence. One experiment showed that response times to probe words increased with the size of the set of candidate probes. The other experiments showed that the effects caused by name repetition in circumstances in which the repeated name was co-referential also occurred when the repeated name was not co-referential and when the order of words in a sentence was scrambled. The results suggest that responses in the task can be based on probe-list memory, a mental representation created to keep track of those words that the participant believes are likely to be probed, and that the use of the task to make inferences about language comprehension should be accompanied by controls ruling out such strategies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of genre expectations on text comprehension.

This article investigates whether expectations about discourse genre influence the process and products of text comprehension. Ss read texts either with a literary story or with a news story as the purported genre. Subsequently, they verified statements pertaining to the texts. Two experiments demonstrated that Ss reading under a literary perspective had longer reading times, better memory for surface information, and a poorer memory for situational information than those reading under a news perspective. Regression analyses of reading times produced findings that were consistent with the memory data. The results support the notion that readers differentially allocate their processing resources according to their expectations about the genre of a text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinctions between reading comprehension and locating information in text.

Reading comprehension is usually operationalized as text recall. However, locating information such as facts, names, or numbers in text is a reading task requiring comprehension that is distinct from text recall in two respects: (1) cognitive processes that control reading comprehension and locating information are expected to be different; (2) the frequency of engagement in comprehension and locating are expected to be independent. We examined these expectations by identifying 4 reading tasks frequently performed by 45 electronics engineers and technicians. Real world reading tasks were simulated with sets of test items in the following domains: (a) comprehending articles, (b) locating information in schematics, (c) locating information in articles, and (d) locating information in manuals. Factor analyses for both the engineers and technicians resulted in two factors, one for comprehension (a) and one for locating information (b, c, d), with a correlation of less than .20. Factor analyses of reading engagement for both groups resulted in factors of (a) comprehending articles, (b) locating information in articles, (c) reading schematics, and (d) reading manuals. Canonical correlations for both groups showed no association between reading engagement variables and reading competence (comprehending and locating) variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A new tool for measuring and understanding individual differences in the component processes of reading comprehension.

We propose a new measure of individual differences in reading comprehension ability that is theoretically motivated, is easy to administer, and that has high predictive power. Participants read 3-sentence paragraphs that describe the relations among a set of real and artificial terms, and then they respond to true–false statements that assess their ability to access and integrate long-term memory knowledge with text information, to make text-based inferences, and to recall text. The components of our task predict performance on a test of global reading comprehension and on a range of specific comprehension tests, each of which draws more heavily on one particular component. Our task is better at predicting reading comprehension than is a typical working memory span task and has the potential for advancing researchers' understanding and measurement of a range of linguistic and cognitive tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Working memory capacity and self-regulatory behavior: Toward an individual differences perspective on behavior determination by automatic versus controlled processes.

In the present research, the authors investigated how individual differences in working memory capacity moderate the relative influence of automatic versus controlled precursors on self-regulatory behavior. In 2 studies, on sexual interest behavior (Study 1) and the consumption of tempting food (Study 2), automatic attitudes toward the temptation of interest had a stronger influence on behavior for individuals who scored low rather than high in working memory capacity. Analogous results emerged in Study 3 on anger expression in a provoking situation when a measure of the automatic personality trait of angriness was employed. Conversely, controlled dispositions such as explicit attitudes (Study 1) and self-regulatory goals (Studies 2 and 3) were more effective in guiding behavior for participants who scored high rather than low in working memory capacity. Taken together, these results demonstrate the importance of working memory capacity for everyday self-regulation and suggest an individual differences perspective on dual-process or dual-system theories of human behavior. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)