Inference generation, story comprehension, and language skills in the preschool years

Several researchers have shown that children’s ability to make inferences is related to their reading comprehension. The majority of research on this topic has been conducted on older children. However, given the recent focus on the importance of narrative comprehension in prereaders, the current study examined the relationship between inference making and story comprehension in 4- to 5-year-olds. We examined children’s online inferences while narrating a wordless book as well as children’s story comprehension of a different storybook. We found that children’s total number of inferences was significantly related to their story comprehension. Three types of inferences were significantly related to story comprehension—characters goals, actions that achieved those goals, and character states. In a hierarchical regression controlling for children’s age and expressive vocabulary, a composite of these three inference types significantly predicted children’s story comprehension.     

Culture or Disability? Examining Deaf Characters in Children’s Book Illustrations

Picture books can influence how children perceive those from backgrounds and cultures different from their own. Studies have been conducted examining how the text of children’s literature portrays multicultural characters or characters with disabilities. However, few have looked specifically at the portrayal of characters through illustrations, despite growing understanding of the importance that illustrations play in text comprehension. Fewer still have analyzed children’s literature for depictions of deaf characters and characteristics of Deaf culture. One recent study examined children’s picture books for portrayals of deaf individuals in the text; however, examining illustrations may provide additional information for both hearing and d/Deaf (For the purpose of this paper, capital “D” Deaf refers to people who are recognized part of the Deaf community; “d” deaf refers to the inability to hear or people unable to hear; d/D includes both populations.) readers about deafness and the Deaf population. In addition, while illustrations are important for all young readers, they may be particularly important for d/Deaf readers who are by nature visual learners. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to conduct a content analysis of illustrations in 20 picture books targeted to ages 4 to 8?years for messages linked to pathological and cultural models of deafness. In addition, results were compared to previous analyses of the text in the picture books. Results indicated that the illustrations do not represent deaf characters from a cultural perspective. Instead, similar to the text, illustrations present deaf characters more frequently as having a pathological condition or disability, that should be fixed through medical interventions in order to fit into a hearing world.     

Assessing functional effectiveness of pictorial representations used in text

Conclusion Recent literature concerning the use of illustrations in text has stressed the need for an assessment of the instructional function being served by the illustration. When an illustration is incorporated into textual matter, it should be serving a specific, pedagogically sound instructional function. Otherwise, the reader probably will not benefit from the illustration’s inclusion in the text; in fact, the reader might be distracted from the text by the illustration, with no cognitive gain being derived from this distraction. Therefore, to the traditional criteria for selection of illustrations used with text must be added the instructional function that is to be served. To determine whether an illustration will serve an intended instructional function effectively, a close examination of both the illustration’s attributes and its relationship to the text must be made. Research has shown that illustrations are composed of a variety of attributes pertaining to physical, instructional, and relational qualities of the illustrations, and that these attributes affect the way in which illustrations can be used as instructional tools. Therefore, the attributes present in an illustration will account in part for its effectiveness in serving an instructional function. The findings of this study suggest that illustrations possessing literal representation are more effective than illustrations possessing analogical representation when the instructional function to be served is identification of properties of phenomenal information, and that illustrations possessing analogical representation are more effective than illustrations possessing literal representation when the instructional function to be served is clarification of nonphenomenal information. Thus, this study is one of many needed to provide a comprehensive analysis of illustrations functioning as instructional supplements to text. Until a thorough understanding of the relationship between attributes and functions of illustrations is achieved, textbooks will in all probability continue to include illustrations which do not fulfill their instructional potential.     

Leaving a Choice for Others: Children’s Evaluations of Considerate,Socially-Mindful Actions

People value those who act with others in mind even as they pursue their own goals. Across three studies (N = 566; 4- to 6-year-olds), we investigated children’s developing understanding of such considerate, socially-mindful actions. By age 6, both U.S. and Chinese children positively evaluate a character who takes a snack for herself in a way that leaves a snack choice for others over a character who leaves no choice (Study 1), but only when the actors had alternative possible actions (Study 2) and when a clear beneficiary was present (Study 3). These results suggest an emerging ability to infer underlying social intentions from self-oriented actions, providing insights into the role of social-cognitive capacities versus culture-specific norms in children’s moral evaluations.     

Young children's comprehension of montage

2 studies examined children's comprehension of brief stop-animation televised segments incorporating elements of cinematic montage such as pans, zooms, and cuts. Children reconstructed the action and dialogue in these segments using the same dolls and settings depicted. In Study 1, there was no effect of cinematic techniques on reconstruction performance of 3- and 5-year-olds as compared to control segments filmed without these techniques. The results challenged the assumption that the use of such techniques per se contributes to young children's poor comprehension of television shows. In Study 2, 12 new segments were produced in which comprehending the montage required inferences of character perspective, implied action sequences, spatial relationships, and simultaneity of different actions. Averaging across all segments, 62% of the 4-year-olds and 88% of the 7-year-olds demonstrated clear comprehension of the montage. Inferences concerning implied action sequences were easiest for both ages. Inferences of simultaneity were most difficult for 4-year-olds, whereas inferences of character perspective were most difficult for 7-year-olds. Preschool children are thus capable of understanding cinematic events conveyed through camera techniques and film editing, despite previous assertions to the contrary. This ability nevertheless substantially increases with age.     

Reading argumentative texts: comprehension and evaluation goals and outcomes

The study is situated at the interface between reading comprehension and critical thinking research. Its purpose was to examine the influence of reading goals and argument quality on the comprehension and critical evaluation of argumentative texts. Young adult readers read to comprehend or evaluate texts on two different controversial issues. Argument quality was varied across text versions on the basis of the hasty generalization fallacy. Text versions varied with respect to the quality of the arguments included, but not in terms of argument content. Measures of comprehension included main claim recall, overall recall and inferences in recall. Text evaluation was measured with a rating task. The sample’s familiarity with the text topics was low, and prior beliefs were relatively neutral. The results indicated that an evaluation goal had a consistent positive effect on main claim and text recall when compared to comprehension goal. Argument quality, however, had no main or interactive effects on text evaluation. The findings indicate that reading to evaluate argumentative text facilitates the representation of its content and critical argument elements, such as the claim it promotes. However, this representation is not sufficient for analyzing and critically evaluating the text’s argument line. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to current efforts to promote critical-analytic thinking skills in the context of reading and writing.     

评价系统在英语阅读中的运用研究

评价系统主要是用来分析语篇的人际意义,而作为语篇分析为主的英语阅读教学则主要是通过学习者对其文本中的各种语言信息或标记及语篇的结构特征进行分析来达到学习者对所阅读的文本研究和理解的目的。通过评价理论的学习,可以帮助英语阅读者自主地掌握和不断地提高英语阅读的水平和理解的能力,进一步达到英语学习的最终目的。     

The role of first person perspective and vivid imagery in memory for written narratives

The use of visualisation techniques in teaching has enabled students to improve their memory and comprehension of written narratives. Psychological research reveals how various factors can influence visualisation and learning, including; adopting a character’s perspective; constructing self-related images; multi-sensory text representing episodic events; and imagery ability. These factors were explored using narratives that represented real events, which contained subjective and objective information. University students (age range 18–25 years) recalled the narratives in a first person, third person and neutral perspective. In the first person perspective, information was connected to their sense of ‘self’, which improved memory. Additionally, the first person perspective improved memory for subjective and objective information for high imagery ability individuals and subjective information for low imagery ability individuals. Overall, the findings suggest that visualisation, first person perspective and narratives representing real experiences improve memory and comprehension. Implications for practice are also discussed.     

Reader,Word, and Character Attributes Contributing to Chinese Children’s Concept of Word

Concept of word—the awareness of how words differ from nonwords or other linguistic properties—is important to learning to read Chinese because words in Chinese texts are not separated by space, and most characters can be productively compounded with other characters to form new words. The current study examined the effects of reader, word, and character attributes on Chinese children’s concept of word in text. A total of 164 fifth-grade Chinese children participated in this study. Concept of word was measured by children’s lexical decisions about words and nonwords embedded in strings of characters. Cross-classified multilevel logistic models showed that reader attributes, including reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, and morphological awareness, interacted with certain word or character attributes in predicting children’s lexical decisions about words or nonwords. This study sheds light on the complex relationships between reader, word, and character attributes in the formation of concept of word in Chinese.     

Levels of Comprehension Monitoring and Working Memory in Good and Poor Comprehenders

This paper reports two studies that investigate differences in comprehension monitoring skills between good and poor comprehenders. Two groups of 9– to 10-year-olds, who were matched for reading vocabulary and word recognition skills but who differed in comprehension skill, were selected. In the first study, in which the children were required to find anomalous words and phrases, the skilled comprehenders engaged in more accurate monitoring of sentence level anomalies (but not word level anomalies) than did the poorer comprehenders. In the second study, the comprehension monitoring task required the children to detect pairs of sentences, in short texts, that were contradictory. In addition, the working memory demands of the task were varied by placing the two items of inconsistent information either in adjacent sentences, or in sentences that were separated in the text by several others. As in the first study, less-skilled comprehenders performed more poorly on the detection task, but the difference between the groups was considerably more pronounced when the sentences were separated than when they were adjacent. In addition, the children were given a numerical working memory test, and the poorer comprehenders performed more poorly on this test. However, although working memory performance was related to performance on some of the error detection tasks, comprehension ability was also a good, and sometimes better, predictor. The results are discussed in terms of the different cognitive abilities that might contribute to efficient comprehension monitoring.     

Parents’ goals for and perceptions of alphabet books

This study examined parents’ goals for reading ABC books with their children and their perceptions of page features. Factor analysis of a questionnaire answered by 225 parents of junior and senior kindergarten students revealed four goals for reading alphabet books. In order of importance as rated by parents the goals were: Learning to Read, Enjoyment and Bonding, Learning from Books, and Soothing the Child. Maternal education, number of ABC books owned, and ABC book reading frequency were related to parents’ goals. When viewing ABC pages, parents rated pages with little text, simple illustrations, and letter sound-word consistency as more appropriate for fulfilling purposes related to learning to decode than pages with a lot of text, complex illustrations, and letter sound-word violations. These perceptions are congruent with previous research and experts’ advice. However, parents rated pages with more complex illustrations as more appropriate for enjoyment, potentially putting books with complex illustrations at cross purposes with the previous goals.     

Children's Difficulties in Text Comprehension: Assessing Causal Issues

In this article we consider the difficulties of children who have a specific reading comprehension problem. Our earlier work has shown that good and poor comprehenders differ, in particular, in their ability to make inferences, integrate information in text, understand story structure, and monitor their understanding. We outline some studies that illustrate the poor comprehenders' problems and present two studies that use a comprehension-age match design to explore the direction of causality between comprehension skill and other abilities. We also present data from the first and second stages of a longitudinal study, when the children were 7 to 8 and 8 to 9 years old. Multiple regression analyses show that a number of factors predict significant variance in comprehension skill even after "general ability" factors such as IQ and vocabulary have been taken into account. These findings suggest that, not only can children have comprehension problems in the absence of word recognition problems, but that distinctly different skills predict variance in word recognition and variance in comprehension. The data support the view that single-word reading skills and the ability to build integrated text representations make independent contributions to overall reading ability. We discuss the implications of these findings for our understanding of children's problems in text comprehension, for deaf readers, and for remediation.     

Young children's recall and reconstruction of audio and audiovisual narratives

It has been claimed that the visual component of audiovisual media dominates young children's cognitive processing. This experiment examines the effects of input modality while controlling the complexity of the visual and auditory content and while varying the comprehension task (recall vs. reconstruction). 4- and 7-year-olds were presented brief stories through either audio or audiovisual media. The audio version consisted of narrated character actions and character utterances. The narrated actions were matched to the utterances on the basis of length and propositional complexity. The audiovisual version depicted the actions visually by means of stop animation instead of by auditory narrative statements. The character utterances were the same in both versions. Audiovisual input produced superior performance on explicit information in the 4-year-olds and produced more inferences at both ages. Because performance on utterances was superior in the audiovisual condition as compared to the audio condition, there was no evidence that visual input inhibits processing of auditory information. Actions were more likely to be produced by the younger children than utterances, regardless of input medium, indicating that prior findings of visual dominance may have been due to the salience of narrative action. Reconstruction, as compared to recall, produced superior depiction of actions at both ages as well as more constrained relevant inferences and narrative conventions.     

图式理论在高职英语听力教学的运用

根据图式理论,任何文本,不论是口头文本还是书面文本,本身并不表达任何信息,而是靠人的先验知识赋予文本信息。听力则是文本输入与大脑中固有知识间的动态交互过程。将图式理论运用到英语听力教学中,通过在“听前”激活图式,在“听中”建构图式以及在“听后”巩固图式,帮助学生建立固有知识与新知识间的桥梁,不断提高其英语听力水平。     

Effects of detailed illustrations on science learning: an eye-tracking study

The eye-tracking method was used to assess the influence of detailed, colorful illustrations on reading behaviors and learning outcomes. Based on participants’ subjective ratings in a pre-study, we selected eight one-page human anatomy lessons. In the main study, participants learned these eight human anatomy lessons; four were accompanied by detailed illustrations, and the other four were accompanied by simplified illustrations. Participants completed a comprehension test and an evaluation questionnaire after reading each lesson. The results showed that detailed and simplified illustrations were equally effective in terms of learning outcomes. Eye-tracking data indicated that the detailed illustrations attracted attention in the initial learning stage and received more visual attention during the overall learning process. Notably, correlation analysis revealed that spending a greater proportion of time re-inspecting the simplified illustration was associated with higher test performances. By contrast, greater proportion of time spent re-inspecting the detailed illustration was not significantly correlated with learning outcomes. The results suggest that detailed illustrations could influence the learning process, and may support learning differently compared with simplified illustrations.     

试论能力本位的教学目标设计

从教育学范畴考察教学目标,各学科的教学目标均应体现“能力本位”精神,即把培养学生的能力作为教学目标的核心。能力本位的教学目标,对知识掌握的教学目标具有统摄关系和包容关系。能力本位的教学目标的实现加上科学精神和科学思想方法的形成,可以使受教育者在人格特质上升华,即人的主体性的生成,实现从工具人向主体人的转化。     

小学低年级教材插图的认知、教育功能与定位分析

在小学教材中,插图起到了文字所做不到的、不可替代的作用。在低年级的教材中,文字、插图、语言共同完成对小学生观察能力、认知能力、理解能力、记忆能力、表达能力、审美能力、学习态度以及情感的培养。同时,对美术编辑的定位进行了论述,提出进行跨学科的理论研究,将教材中的插图创作与文字编辑紧密结合起来,以实现培养学生快乐学习的良好情感和品质,并使其受益终身的目的。