Generative preparation tasks in digital collaborative learning: actor and partner effects of constructive preparation activities on deep comprehension.

Deep learning from collaboration occurs if the learner enacts interactive activities in the sense of leveraging the knowledge externalized by co-learners as resource for own inferencing processes and if these interactive activities in turn promote the learner's deep comprehension outcomes. This experimental study investigates whether inducing dyad members to enact constructive preparation activities can promote deep learning from subsequent collaboration while examining prior knowledge as moderator. In a digital collaborative learning environment, 122 non-expert university students assigned to 61 dyads studied a text about the human circulatory system and then prepared individually for collaboration according to their experimental conditions: the preparation tasks varied across dyads with respect to their generativity, that is, the degree to which they required the learners to enact constructive activities (note-taking, compare-contrast, or explanation). After externalizing their answer to the task, learners in all conditions inspected their partner's externalization and then jointly discussed their text understanding via chat. Results showed that more rather than less generative tasks fostered constructive preparation but not interactive collaboration activities or deep comprehension outcomes. Moderated mediation analyses considering actor and partner effects indicated the indirect effects of constructive preparation activities on deep comprehension outcomes via interactive activities to depend on prior knowledge: when own prior knowledge was relatively low, self-performed but not partner-performed constructive preparation activities were beneficial. When own prior knowledge was relatively high, partner-performed constructive preparation activities were conducive while one's own were ineffective or even detrimental. Given these differential effects, suggestions are made for optimizing the instructional design around generative preparation tasks to streamline the effectiveness of constructive preparation activities for deep learning from digital collaboration.

Differences in scanpath pattern and verbal working memory predicts efficient reading in the Cloze gap-filling test.

Different tests measure text comprehension, including the cloze gap-filling test, often used for language learning. Different studies hypothesized cognitive strategies in this type of test and their relationship with working memory and performance. However, no study investigated the cloze test, working memory, and possible cognitive strategies, while performing the test. Therefore, this study aimed to identify cognitive visual strategies in the cloze test by applying an unsupervised algorithm and to analyze the relationship between these strategies with working memory and performance in the cloze test. Our sample consisted of 51 university students, the largest sample in studies of cognitive strategies with cloze tests. Participants answered an 11-item cloze test in a computer with eye-tracking, a verbal working memory test, and a visuospatial working memory test. Our analysis of participants' scanpath identified two main strategies: one with fewer toggles between text and word bank and fewer fixations than the other one, indicating the existence of a global strategy. Furthermore, a model predicting the efficiency of participants in the cloze test found that item complexity, using a global strategy, and higher scores of working memory were the most significant predictors. These results confirm the hypothesis of a global strategy being related to successfully achieving higher-order reading processes.

The Role of Verbal Fluency as a Variable in Reading and Comprehension Skills in Bengali.

The study explored the role of verbal fluency in determining reading and comprehension skills in Bengali among 10-year old typically developing Bengali children. Robust correlations were found between semantic fluency and word reading (0.63) as well as semantic fluency and comprehension (0.70). Good correlation was found between letter fluency and comprehension (0.49), and, word reading and comprehension (0.62). The findings suggest that good word storing capacity and executive functions led to enhanced automaticity of retrieval and verbal fluency, which together with improved orthographic and phonological processing led to good word reading scores, contributing to lesser cognitive load thereby easing out the complex text comprehension task. Transcending narrow empirical base of reading theories derived from Western writing typologies delimited to orthographic depth and psycholinguistic grain size, the study contends that verbal fluency is another interesting variable determining the reading and comprehension skills in Bengali along with visuo-spatial complexity and complex phonology-orthography inconsistencies.

Print and digital reading habits and comprehension in children with and without special education needs.

BACKGROUND: Text comprehension is a major obstacle for many Primary school students with special education needs (SEN). Reading episodes bring students opportunities to be exposed to new vocabulary and knowledge, potentially boosting their development of text comprehension skills. AIMS: Our study seeks to understand how reading frequency (leisure and academic) and reading medium (print and digital) contribute to the development of text comprehension during Primary school in students with and without SEN. METHODS AND PROCEDURES: We tested 2289 Spanish students from fourth to sixth grade, from which 212 had an official decision of SEN. Students self-reported their reading frequency (as a measure of their reading habits) and completed a standardized text comprehension test. We employed multiple regression models with a robust maximum likelihood estimator to test associations between reading frequency and comprehension. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS: Students' comprehension was positively associated with their leisure print reading habits, and negatively associated with their frequency of academic digital reading. Those associations were independent of SEN status. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Results highlight the importance of promoting leisure reading in print to all students, regardless of SEN status. In addition, caution is advised when encouraging Primary school children to use digital texts when the emphasis is on comprehending texts for acquiring knowledge.

Efficacy of reading strategies on text-level reading comprehension in people with post-stroke chronic aphasia: A repeated measures study.

BACKGROUND: People with aphasia (PWA) frequently experience difficulties in understanding longer written content such as paragraphs or books. Reading strategies are a promising approach to treat text-level reading comprehension deficits in PWA. Nevertheless, empirical evidence for their efficacy remains rare. AIMS: The primary objective of this study was to analyse the efficacy of a strategy-based intervention on text-level reading comprehension in PWA. Secondary objectives were to compare the effects of two strategy-based intervention components and to explore potential moderator effects. METHODS & PROCEDURES: A protocol was published prior to data acquisition. In a repeated measures trial, 26 German participants with chronic, post-stroke aphasia participated in a waiting period without aphasia treatment (control condition) followed by a strategy-based intervention called 'Strategiebasierte Textverständnis-Therapie bei Aphasie' (StraTexT, 14 face-to-face-sessions, twice per week, 60 min each). Two strategy combinations, Intervention Micro targeting microstructure and Intervention Macro targeting macrostructure, were applied to newspaper and magazine articles. Participants were randomly allocated to two parallel groups that received these strategy combinations in interchanged sequences. Assessments were implemented before and after each period as well as 3 and 6 months after the intervention. The primary outcome measure was text-level reading comprehension measured with the total score of a German version of the Test de Compréhension de Textes (TCT-D). Secondary outcome measures addressed the self-reported perception of reading abilities, reading activities and feelings about reading (German version of the Comprehensive Assessment of Reading in Aphasia CARA reading questionnaire) as well as selected cognitive functions. OUTCOMES & RESULTS: The per-protocol-analysis included data from 22 participants. We found significant small improvements up to 6 months post-intervention compared to pre-intervention in the TCT-D Total (d  =  0.35-0.46) as well as medium to large improvements in the CARA questionnaire (d  =  0.68-0.96). Up to 3 months after the intervention, treatment-induced improvements in the TCT-D Total were significantly larger than change without treatment during the control condition. There was no evidence of moderator effects. Furthermore, we found improvements in several cognitive functions. CONCLUSIONS & IMPLICATIONS: Reading strategies can lead to long-term improvements in text-level reading comprehension and in self-reported reading abilities, feelings about reading and reading activities in aphasia. In regular clinical settings, it seems reasonable to implement both Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro. It remains important to investigate participant characteristics that contribute to treatment success. WHAT THIS PAPER ADDS: What is already known on the subject Systematic reviews and multiple case studies suggest that reading strategies are a promising approach to treat text-level reading comprehension in aphasia. The efficacy of reading strategies has been demonstrated for different populations. However, to date no group study has evaluated the efficacy of reading strategies on text-level reading comprehension in people with aphasia. What this study adds This study provides the first group-level evidence about the efficacy of a systematic strategy-based intervention in 22 people with post-stroke chronic aphasia. During 14 treatment sessions, participants applied four reading strategies to newspaper and magazine articles within two intervention components called Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro (two strategies per intervention component). We found improvements in text-level reading comprehension for at least 3 months post-intervention, as well as effects on selected cognitive functions and self-reported reading abilities, thoughts and feelings about reading and the ability to engage in reading activities. What are the clinical implications of this work? The strategies and materials evaluated in this study could be used in clinical practice with people with aphasia. In order to replicate treatment effects in clinical practice, we suggest applying the strategy combination with the same protocol features (e.g., frequency, duration, homework, product orientation) as in this study, implementing Intervention Micro and Intervention Macro sequentially in either order. As treatment response was not equal in all individuals, it seems important to investigate individual features that contribute to treatment success.

Mad or mad-mad: conveying subtle emotion with face emoji.

Introduction: To compensate for the lack of pragmatic information available when communicating via text message, texters make frequent use of texting-specific cues, or textisms, to convey meaning that would otherwise be apparent in spoken conversation. Here, we explore how one such cue, face emoji, can impact the interpretation of text messages. METHODS: In Experiment 1, we paired neutral text messages with valenced face emoji to determine whether the emoji can alter the meaning of the text. In Experiment 2, we paired valenced text messages with valenced face emoji to determine whether the emoji can modulate the valence of the text. RESULTS: In Experiment 1, we found that texts paired with positive emoji were rated more positively than texts paired with negative emoji. Furthermore, texts paired with stronger-valenced emoji were rated as less neutral compared to texts paired with milder-valenced emoji. In Experiment 2, we found that slightly positive texts paired with strong positive emoji were rated somewhat similarly to the same texts paired with mild positive emoji; however, slightly negative texts paired with strong negative emoji were rated much more negatively than the same texts paired with mild negative emoji. DISCUSSION: These results indicate that the presence of face emoji, particularly negative face emoji, can alter the interpretation of text messages, allowing texters to communicate nuanced meaning and subtle emotion.

Conceptual overlap among texts impedes comprehension monitoring.

For decades, research on metacomprehension has demonstrated that many learners struggle to accurately discriminate their comprehension of texts. However, while reviews of experimental studies on relative metacomprehension accuracy have found average intra-individual correlations between predictions and performance of around .27 for adult readers, in some contexts even lower near-zero accuracy levels have been reported. One possible explanation for those strikingly low levels of accuracy is the high conceptual overlap between topics of the texts. To test this hypothesis, in the present work participants were randomly assigned to read one of two text sets that differed in their degree of conceptual overlap. Participants judged their understanding and completed an inference test for each topic. Across two studies, mean relative accuracy was found to match typical baseline levels for the low-overlap text sets and was significantly lower for the high-overlap text sets. Results suggest text similarity is an important factor impacting comprehension monitoring accuracy that may have contributed to the variable and sometimes inconsistent results reported in the metacomprehension literature.

When there is noise on Sherlock Holmes: mind wandering increases with perceptual processing difficulty during reading and listening.

We investigated whether increased perceptual processing difficulty during reading or listening to a Sherlock Holmes novella impacts mind wandering as well as text comprehension. We presented 175 participants with a novella in either a visual or an auditory presentation format and probed their thoughts and motivational states from time to time during reading/listening. For half of the participants in each presentation-format condition (visual or auditory), the story was superimposed by Gaussian noise. For both presentation formats, the participants who were exposed to noise while processing the story mind-wandered more and performed worse in a later comprehension test than the participants who processed the story without added noise. These negative effects of increased perceptual processing difficulty on task focus and comprehension were partly driven by motivational factors: reading/listening motivation mediated the relationship between perceptual processing difficulty and mind wandering.

Influence of letter shape on readers' emotional experience, reading fluency, and text comprehension and memorisation.

Introduction: The amount of educational material delivered to pupils and students through digital screens is increasing. This method of delivering educational materials has become even more prevalent during the COVID-19 pandemic. To be as effective as possible, educational material must be properly designed not only in terms of content, but also in terms of form, e.g., the typeface. The present study investigated the effect of letter shape on readers' feelings of pleasantness during reading, reading fluency, and text comprehension and memorisation. Methods: To find out whether age influences the effects of typeface shape on reading measures, we divided the participants into a group of less experienced readers (children) and more experienced readers (adults). Both groups read texts in eight different typefaces: four of them were round or in rounded shape, and four were angular or in pointed shape. With an eye-tracker, the reading speed and the number of regressive saccades were recorded as measures of reading fluency and changes in pupil size as an indicator of emotional response. After reading each text, the participants rated the pleasantness of the typeface, and their comprehension and memorisation of texts were checked by asking two questions about the text content. Results: We found that compared to angular letters or letters in pointed shape, round letters or letters in round shape created more pleasant feelings for readers and lead to a faster reading speed. Children, as expected, read more slowly due to less reading experiences, but, interestingly, had a similar number of regressive saccades and did not comprehend or remember the text worse than university students. Discussion: We concluded that softer typefaces of rounder shapes should be used in educational materials, as they make the reading process easier and thus support the learning process better for both younger and adult readers. The results of our study also showed that a comparison of findings of different studies may depend on the differences among the used letter shapes.

Reading with induced worry: The role of physiological self-regulation and working memory updating in text comprehension.

BACKGROUND: An interplay of emotional and cognitive aspects underlies academic performance. We focused on the contribution of such interplay to text comprehension. AIMS: We investigated the effect of worry on comprehension and the role of two potential moderators of this effect: physiological self-regulation as resting heart rate variability (HRV) and working memory updating. SAMPLE: Eighty-two seventh graders were involved in a quasi-experimental design. METHODS: Students read an informational text in one of two reading conditions: to read for themselves to know more (n = 46; low-worry condition) or to gain the highest score in a ranking (n = 36; high-worry condition). Students' resting HRV was recorded while watching a video of a natural scenario. The executive function of working memory updating was also assessed. After reading, students completed a comprehension task. RESULTS: Findings revealed the moderating role of HRV in the relationship between induced worry and text comprehension. In the high-worry condition, students with higher resting HRV performed better than students who read under the same instructions but had lower HRV. In contrast, in the low-worry condition, students with higher resting HRV showed a lower performance as compared to students with lower HRV. Finally, working memory updating was positively related to text comprehension. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings indicate that the cognitive component of anxiety, that is, worry, plays a role in performing a fundamental learning activity like text comprehension. The importance of physiological self-regulation emerges clearly. In a condition of high worry, higher ability to regulate emotions and thoughts acts as a protective factor.

Credible narrators and misinformed readers.

Stories have a powerful ability to shape our beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge about the world. In the current work, we ask how readers evaluate the truth of facts embedded in fiction. In three experiments, we investigate the influence of the credibility of the story's narrator on the likelihood that readers encode and recall misinformation contained in the narrative. Participants read stories containing accurate real-world facts and misleading lures. The stories were narrated by either a credible or a non-credible narrator. Following the stories, participants were tested for the critical story information with a free response test of their general knowledge (Experiments 1 and 2) or with a speeded true-false test (Experiment 3). Overall, narrator credibility had no influence on readers' memory for accurate information. However, readers were more likely to reproduce and affirm misinformation when it was delivered by a credible than a non-credible narrator. The current studies suggest that the credibility and the expertise of the source of the information are critical in determining what readers remember and believe.

Modeling items for text comprehension assessment using confirmatory factor analysis.

Reading is a complex cognitive task with the ultimate goal of comprehending the written input. For longer, connected text, readers generate a mental representation that serves as its basis. Due to limited cognitive resources, common models of discourse representation assume distinct processing levels, each relying on different processing mechanisms. However, only little research addresses distinct representational levels when text comprehension is assessed, analyzed or modelled. Moreover, current studies that tried to relate process measures of reading (e.g., reading times, eye movements) to comprehension did not consider comprehension as a multi-faceted, but rather a uni-dimensional construct, usually assessed with one-shot items. Thus, the first aim of this paper is to use confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to test whether comprehension can be modelled as a uni-or multi-dimensional concept. The second aim is to investigate how well widely used one-shot items can be used to capture comprehension. 400 participants read one of three short stories of comparable length, linguistic characteristics, and complexity. Based on the evaluation of three independent raters per story, 16 wh-questions and 60 yes/no-statements were compiled in order to retrieve information at micro and inference level, and 16 main contents were extracted to capture information at the macro level in participants' summaries. Still, only a fraction of these items showed satisfactory psychometric properties and factor loadings - a blatant result considering the common practice for item selection. For CFA, two models were set up that address text comprehension as either a one-dimensional construct (a uni-factor model with a single comprehension factor), or a three-dimensional construct reflecting the three distinct representational levels (three correlated first-order factors). Across stories and item types, model fit was consistently better for the three-factor model providing evidence for a multi-dimensional construct of text comprehension. Our results provide concrete guidance for the preparation of comprehension measurements in studies investigating the reading process.

Is theology more of a field than a father is a king? Modelling semantic relatedness in processing literal and metaphorical statements.

One major question in the study of metaphors historically is: Are different mechanisms involved in the comprehension of figurative statements versus literal statements? Many studies have addressed this question from a variety of perspectives, with mixed results. Following Harati, Westbury, and Kiaee (Behavior Research Methods, 53, 2214-2225, 2021), we use a computational (word embedding) model of semantics to approach the question in a way that allows for the quantification of the semantic relationship between the two keywords in literal and metaphorical "x is a y" statements. We first demonstrate that almost all literal statements (95.2% of 582 statements we considered) have very high relatedness values. We then show that literality decisions are slower for literal statements with low relatedness and metaphorical statements with high relatedness. We find a similar but smaller effect attributable to the cosine of the vectors representing the two keywords. The fact that the same measurable characteristics allow us to predict which metaphors or literal sentences will have the slowest literality decision times suggests that the same processes underlie the comprehension of both literal and metaphorical statements.

The Task Matters: A Scoping Review on Reading Comprehension Abilities in ADHD.

OBJECTIVE: A broad range of tasks have been used to classify individuals with ADHD with reading comprehension difficulties. However, the inconsistency in the literature warrants a scoping review of current knowledge about the relationship between ADHD diagnosis and reading comprehension ability. METHOD: A comprehensive search strategy was performed to identify relevant articles on the topic. Thirty-four articles met inclusion criteria for the current review. RESULTS: The evidence as a whole suggests reading comprehension is impaired in ADHD. The most prominent effect was found in studies where participants retell or pick out central ideas in stories. On these tasks, participants with ADHD performed consistently worse than typically developing controls. However, some studies found that performance in ADHD improved when reading comprehension task demands were low. CONCLUSION: Results suggest that performance in ADHD depends on the way reading comprehension is measured and further guide future work clarifying why there are such discrepant findings across studies.

Control and value appraisals and online multiple-text comprehension in primary school: The mediating role of boredom and the moderating role of word-reading fluency.

BACKGROUND: Online multiple-text comprehension is a key skill of the 21st Century, yet the study of its relations with boredom in young students has been disregarded. Boredom is an achievement emotion expected to be predicted negatively by antecedents like control and value appraisals and to be associated to a negative performance. Notwithstanding its documented domain-specificity, scarce attention has been paid to investigating these relations with primary-school students in the reading domain, and specifically for online multiple-text comprehension, and to how such relations are moderated by basic cognitive abilities. AIMS: Considering separately two settings (homework, test), we studied the mediation of boredom in the relation between control-value appraisals and online multiple-text comprehension in primary-school students, focusing on the moderating role of word-reading fluency. SAMPLE: Participants were 334 fourth and fifth graders. METHODS: We evaluated students' reading-related self-efficacy and task-value, reading-related boredom for homework and tests, word-reading fluency, and online multiple-text comprehension. RESULTS: Path analyses revealed negative relations between control-value appraisals and boredom for homework and tests, and between boredom and online multiple-text comprehension for tests only. For the latter, word-reading fluency moderated the relation between appraisals, boredom, and comprehension: Boredom negatively related to comprehension only for students with high word-reading fluency. CONCLUSIONS: Findings are discussed focusing on antecedents of online multiple-text comprehension as a literacy skill critical in the 21st Century. We underlined their implications for learning in general and specifically for the current educational changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comparing metacognitive monitoring between native and non-native speaking primary school students.

Metacognitive monitoring is a significant predictor of academic achievement and is assumed to be related to language competencies. Hence, it may explain academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students. We compared metacognitive monitoring (in terms of resolution) between native and non-native speaking fourth graders (~ 10 year olds) in two studies. In Study 1, we matched 30 native and 30 non-native speakers and assessed their monitoring in the context of a paired-associates task, including a recognition test and confidence judgements. Study 1 revealed that recognition and monitoring did not differ between native and non-native speaking children. In Study 2, we matched 36 native and 36 non-native speakers and assessed their monitoring with the same paired-associates task. Additionally, we included a text comprehension task with open-ended questions and confidence judgments. We replicated the findings of Study 1, suggesting that recognition and monitoring do not necessarily differ between native and non-native speakers. However, native speaking students answered more open-ended questions correctly than non-native speaking students did. Nevertheless, the two groups did not differ in monitoring their answers to open-ended questions. Our results indicate that native and non-native speaking children may monitor their metacognitive resolution equally, independent of task performance and characteristics. In conclusion, metacognitive monitoring deficits may not be the primary source of the academic performance differences between native and non-native speaking students.

Micropoetry Meets Neurocognitive Poetics: Influence of Associations on the Reception of Poetry.

Reading and understanding poetic texts is often described as an interactive process influenced by the words and phrases building the poems and all associations and images induced by them in the readers mind. Iser, for example, described the understanding process as the closing of a good Gestalt promoted by mental images. Here, we investigate the effect that semantic cohesion, that is the internal connection of a list words, has on understanding and appreciation of poetic texts. To do this, word lists are presented as modern micropoems to the participants and the (ease of) extraction of underlying concepts as well as the affective and aesthetic responses are implicitly and explicitly measured. We found that a unifying concept is found more easily and unifying concepts vary significantly less between participants when the words composing a micropoem are semantically related. Moreover these items are liked better and are understood more easily. Our study shows evidence for the assumed relationship between building spontaneous associations, forming mental imagery, and understanding and appreciation of poetic texts. In addition, we introduced a new method well-suited to manipulate backgrounding features independently of foregrounding features which allows to disentangle the effects of both on poetry reception.

Examining perceptions, selections, and products in undergraduates' learning from multiple resources.

BACKGROUND: When learning about complex topics using the Internet, students commonly encounter a multitude of textual, non-textual (e.g., images and graphs), and multimedia (e.g., videos) resources. Yet students' learning from multiple texts and multiple (non-textual) resources (MT-MR learning) has received insufficient consideration in the literature. AIMS: We examine the associations among (1) undergraduates' conceptions of reasons for multiple resource access, (2) log-data of resource use when completing a MT-MR task, and (3) writing performance. SAMPLE: Participants were 72 undergraduate students in the United States. METHODS: Undergraduates were provided with a library of five texts and one video, with the option of accessing supplemental data (e.g., graphs and maps) in association with each resource. Log-data (e.g., time and supplemental data access) of undergraduates' resource use were collected. Undergraduates were then asked to compose a research report and to describe what they considered the purpose of multiple resource access to be. RESULTS: Four types of conceptions were identified, reflecting a desire to (1) access a lot of information, (2) understand multiple perspectives, (3) corroborate and evaluate information, and (4) develop a personal understanding of a given topic. Undergraduates who considered corroboration and evaluation to be the purpose of multiple resource access were more likely to access more supplemental data sources and performed better on a multiple resource learning task. CONCLUSIONS: Undergraduates in our sample held conceptions largely similar to, but in some aspects distinct from, those identified by Barzilai and Zohar (Cognit Instruct, 30, 2012, 39). Conceptions were associated with resource access during task completion and with writing performance.

Compreensão de Leitura no Ensino Médio e Desempenho Acadêmico em Diferentes Matérias Escolares / Reading Comprehension in High School and Academic Performance in Different School Subjects / Comprensión Lectora en la Escuela Secundaria y el Rendimiento Académico en Diferentes Materias Escolares

O presente estudo teve como objetivo analisar se a Compreensão de Textos Literários e Científicos de uma amostra de alunos do Ensino Médio contribuiu para o Desempenho Acadêmico desses alunos em disciplinas que não apenas de linguagem. Participaram dessa pesquisa 75 estudantes do Ensino Médio de uma escola Pública do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. A média de idade foi de 17,07 anos (DP = 0,74). A compreensão de leitura científica foi avaliada com dois pequenos textos seguidos de perguntas de múltipla escolha, o teste de Compreensão de leitura literária foi um teste de Cloze, a inteligência geral foi avaliada pelas Matrizes Progressivas de Raven e a avaliação de desempenho escolar foi calculada pela média do Coeficiente de Rendimento dos alunos. Análises de regressão mostraram que a Compreensão de Leitura de Textos Científicos contribuiu para o desempenho acadêmico medido pelo coeficiente de rendimento médio, mesmo depois de controlado a inteligência não verbal. Os resultados corroboram com estudos que apontam a importância da compreensão de texto para o sucesso acadêmico em todo o ciclo escolar. (AU)

The present study aimed to analyze whether high school students' Comprehension of Literary and Scientific Texts out of a sample of High School students is associated with the academic performance in subject matters not related to language specifically. Seventy-five high school students from a public school in the state of Rio de Janeiro participated in this research. The mean age was 17.07 years (SD = 0.74). Scientific reading comprehension was assessed with two small texts followed by multiple choice questions, the literally reading comprehension was followed by a Cloze test, overall score was assessed using Raven Progressive Matrices and the mean grade score from the students was a measure of their school performance. Regression analyzes showed that Reading Comprehension of Scientific Texts contributed to academic performance measured by the mean score of grades even after controlling for nonverbal intelligence. The results corroborate studies that point out the importance of text comprehension for academic success throughout the school cycle. (AU)

Este estudio tuvo como objetivo analizar si la comprensión de los textos literarios y científicos de una muestra de estudiantes de secundaria contribuyó con el desempeño académico de estos alumnos en asignaturas además de las de lenguaje. Setenta y cinco estudiantes de secundaria de una escuela pública en el estado de Río de Janeiro participaron en esta investigación. La edad promedio fue de 17.07 años (DE = 0.74). La comprensión lectora científica se evaluó con dos textos pequeños seguidos de preguntas de opción múltiple, la prueba de comprensión lectora literaria fue una prueba Cloze, la inteligencia general se evaluó mediante las Matrices Progresivas de Raven y la evaluación del desempeño escolar se calculó mediante promedio del coeficiente de desempeño de los estudiantes. Los análisis de regresión mostraron que la comprensión lectora de textos científicos contribuyó al rendimiento académico medido por el coeficiente de rendimiento promedio, incluso después de controlar la inteligencia no verbal. Los resultados corroboran con estudios que señalan la importancia de la comprensión de textos para el éxito académico a lo largo del ciclo escolar. (AU)

Information Structure and Word Order Canonicity in the Comprehension of Spanish Texts: An Eye-Tracking Study.

Word order alternation has been described as one of the most productive information structure markers and discourse organizers across languages. Psycholinguistic evidence has shown that word order is a crucial cue for argument interpretation. Previous studies about Spanish sentence comprehension have shown greater difficulty to parse sentences that present a word order that does not respect the order of participants of the verb's lexico-semantic structure, irrespective to whether the sentences follow the canonical word order of the language or not. This difficulty has been accounted as the cognitive cost related to the miscomputation of prominence status of the argument that precedes the verb. Nonetheless, the authors only analyzed the use of alternative word orders in isolated sentences, leaving aside the pragmatic motivation of word order alternation. By means of an eye-tracking task, the current study provides further evidence about the role of information structure for the comprehension of sentences with alternative word order and verb type, and sheds light on the interaction between syntax, semantics and pragmatics. We analyzed both "early" and "late" eye-movement measures as well as accuracy and response times to comprehension questions. Results showed an overall influence of information structure reflected in a modulation of late eye-movement measures as well as offline measures like total reading time and questions response time. However, effects related to the miscomputation of prominence status did not fade away when sentences were preceded by a context that led to non-canonical word order of constituents, showing that prominence computation is a core mechanism for argument interpretation, even in sentences preceded by context.