The effects of different types of text and individual differences on view complexity about genetically modified organisms

ABSTRACT

View change about socio-scientific issues has been well studied in the literature, but the change in the complexity of those views has not. In the current study, the change in the complexity of views about a specific scientific topic (i.e. genetically modified organisms; GMOs) and use of evidence in explaining those views was examined in relation to individual factors and type of text (informational, persuasive, or narrative). Undergraduate students completed measures of their prior views about GMOs their epistemic beliefs about the nature of science, and activities related to food consumption. Participants then read either an informational, persuasive, or narrative passage about GMOs and again answered a question related to their views about GMOs. Participants who read the persuasive passage decreased in the complexity of their views, while those who read the narrative and expository passage increased in the complexity of their views. Additionally, while cultural activities related to the complexity of individuals’ views during the pretest, these significant differences were not evident at posttest after the text intervention. These findings can be used to help scientists and teachers better understand how to communicate information critical to understanding complex science and environmental issues to the public and their students.     

The influence of topic knowledge, domain knowledge, and interest on the comprehension of scientific exposition

In this study, we explored the influence of subject-matter knowledge and interest on college students' comprehension of scientific exposition. Two forms of subject-matter knowledge were considered: Passage-specific (i.e., topic) knowledge and general (i.e., domain) knowledge. College students read two passages from physics, one dealing with Stephen Hawking and Grand Unification Theory, and one about the search for the truth quark. Students' topic knowledge and domain knowledge were tested before reading the passages. After reading each passage, students rated their interest in what they read. Comprehension measures were then completed for each passage. We performed regression analyses to determine the effects of subject-matter knowledge and interest on the comprehension scores for each passage. For the more technical Quarks passage, domain knowledge and interest were both significant predictors of comprehension. For the more personally-involving Hawking passage, topic knowledge, domain knowledge, and interest were significant predictors of comprehension performance. Overall, students were more interested in less abstruse and more personally-involving information for both passages.     

Bilingual referents in cognitive processing

The study reported investigated whether using both of a bilingual's languages to process expository text enhanced or impaired comprehension. Eighty French-English bilinguals read a passage written in either French or English, took notes on the passage in either French or English, and completed tests of free recall and inference in French and English. Bilinguals who used both of their languages to read and take notes neither recognized nor recalled more information overall than their counterparts who read and took notes in the same language. Bilinguals who read and took notes in alternate languages, however, recalled more of those notes than subjects who read and took notes in the same language. Implications for future research pertaining to the interaction of bilinguals' languages during processing of text are discussed.     

Comprehension processes and outcomes with refutation and expository texts and their contribution to learning

The study compared the comprehension processes and outcomes obtained with refutation and expository text and their association with learning outcomes. After a knowledge pretest, undergraduate students read an extended expository text or a corresponding refutation text that addressed three potential misconceptions about the scientific concept of energy. Think-aloud, cued recall, and posttest data indicated that the positive impact of refutation text was more associated with comprehension outcomes than processes. Refutation text did not influence comprehension processes but facilitated valid inference generation in recall and minimized the negative effects of distortions on learning. The findings suggest the timing of the refutation text effect to be later, after reading, and its nature to be that of neutralizing the influence of any misconceptions on learning from text instead of changing them.     

Going beyond the author: what retellings tell us about comprehending narrative and expository texts

This research examines the nature of comprehended meanings that do not match those of the author. These meanings were generated by two groups of fourth graders after reading a narrative or expository text. Readers read their respective texts aloud, followed by a recall and probes. Reading behaviours were examined to establish that processing difficulties did not significantly impact reader comprehension. Retold clauses that did not match those in the text were classified using a retelling taxonomy: substitution, addition, summary, conflict, rearrangement, omission. It was discovered that both groups of readers went beyond the information given, approximately 18 per cent of the time for the narration and 59 per cent of the time for the exposition. Additionally, the profiles of this information varied between the two groups. Narrative retellings contained a high percentage of conflicts, with very few substitutions, summaries or rearrangement of ideas. In contrast, expository retellings had significant numbers of substitutions and summaries, with fewer additions and rearrangements. It is hypothesised that reader background knowledge accounted for the variation in the retelling profiles and that this background facilitated as well as inhibited understanding. Given such variation even among these proficient readers, teachers not only need to help students develop background knowledge related to the text, but also encourage readers to cross‐check their understandings with the text. Interestingly, this cross‐checking is especially needed when there is an alignment between reader background and text content.     

Effect of prior domain knowledge and headings on processing of informative text

College students with either high or low prior domain knowledge (PK) read a text chapter presented in short pages on a computer monitor. Half of the participants read with headings present and half with headings absent. The computer recorded time spent reading and rereading each short page. Learning was assessed through a structured recall task. In general, headings seem to improve recall of high importance information, and headings were more effective for high PK learners. Analysis of time data showed that participants with headings spent more time per word reading the pages with headings than participants that did not have headings. Prior knowledge had no effect on attention to either high importance information or important supporting detail. Low prior knowledge readers decreased the amount of time spent reading each word as they progressed through the passage and neither the presence nor absence of headings influenced this effect.     

Exploring the effect of background knowledge and text cohesion on learning from texts in computer science

In this study, we examine the effect of background knowledge and local cohesion on learning from texts. The study is based on construction–integration model. Participants were 176 undergraduate students who read a Computer Science text. Half of the participants read a text of maximum local cohesion and the other a text of minimum local cohesion. Afterwards, they answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of text-based, bridging-inference and elaborative-inference questions. The results showed that students with high background knowledge, reading the low-cohesion text, performed better in bridging-inference and in elaborative-inference questions, than those who read the high-cohesion text. Students with low background knowledge, reading the high-cohesion text, performed better in all types of questions than students reading the low-cohesion text only in elaborative-inference questions. The performance with open-ended and multiple-choice questions was similar, indicating that this type of question is more difficult to answer, regardless of the question format.     

Computerized Presentation of Text: Effects on Children’s Reading of Informational Material

This study examined whether children’s reading rate, comprehension, and recall are affected by computer presentation of text. Participants were 60 grade five students, who each read two expository texts, one in a traditional print format and the other from a computer monitor, which used a common scrolling text interface. After reading each text, participants were asked to recall as much as they could from what they had read and then answered questions that measured text recall and comprehension. Children took more time to read the passage and recalled more of the text material that they had read from the computer monitor. The benefit of computer presentation disappeared when efficiency variables, which take time into account, were examined. Children were, however, more efficient at comprehending text when reading from paper. The results suggest that children may take more time to read text on computer screens and that they are more efficient when reading text on paper.     

How Organizational Signals, Need for Cognition, and Verbal Ability Affect Text Recall and Recognition

This study investigated the effects of organizational signals, need for cognition, and verbal ability on recall and recognition of information from an expository text. Ninety-two undergraduate students completed the Need for Cognition scale (Cacioppo, Petty, & Kao, 1984) and read a text that either: (a) contained organizational signals in the form of an overview, headings, and a summary or (b) contained no signals. Consistent with our primary hypothesis, there was a marginal tendency for organizational signals to interact with need for cognition to influence conditional recall of expository text information. Specifically, need for cognition was related marginally to conditional recall only in the "no signals" condition. Organizational signals, need for cognition, and verbal ability contributed significantly to prediction of performance on three measures of text recall. By contrast, performance on the recognition test was influenced by an interaction between organizational signals and verbal ability. Implications of the findings are discussed. Copyright 2000 Academic Press.     

Content,domain, and word knowledge: Relationship to comprehension of narrative and expository text

The influence of background knowledge on reader's comprehension of text has become a fundamental assumption associated with text processing. Background knowledge has been represented in a variety of constructs including specific text knowledge, general world knowledge, discourse knowledge, and domain knowledge. Our interest in the present study was to examine background knowledge and strategy knowledge from a broad view to better understand how they contribute to elementary-age students' reading comprehension of both narrative and expository texts. Constructs of domain, content, and word knowledge were developed based on the extant literature. These knowledge constructs were measured with researcher-developed tests consisting of both narrative and expository passages ranging from 1000 to 2000 words (2–4 pages) in length. Comprehension of each passage was measured with a 25-item subtest. All students in Grades 3 through 6 were administered the knowledge and comprehension tests. A two-stage analysis procedure was used. Exploratory factor analysis was used to examine empirically the internal structures of the comprehension questions. Factor scores were constructed and then treated as a multivariate set, with a second set comprised of the background and strategy factors. A canonical analysis was then performed to relate the two sets and canonical functions and structure coefficients were interpreted substantively. Our findings indicated that background knowledge specific to the content of the text being read begins to diminish in importance at about Grade 4. Strategy knowledge and use in comprehension of text begin to play a more important role at Grade 4 and above. Grade 6 analyses support a conclusion that the reading development process in elementary grades has been completed, and that reading comprehension at this grade is primarily an indicator of students' proficiency in selecting efficient ways to gain meaning from text.     

That noun phrase may be beneficial and this may not be: discourse cohesion in reading and writing

This paper examines the effects of attended and unattended demonstratives on text processing, comprehension, and writing quality in two studies. In the first study, participants (n = 45) read 64 mini-stories in a self-paced reading task and identified the main referent in the clauses. The sentences varied in the type of demonstratives (i.e., this, that, these, and those) contained in the sentences and whether the referent was followed by a demonstrative determiner and noun (i.e., an attended demonstrative) or a demonstrative pronoun (i.e., an unattended demonstrative). In the second study, 173 persuasive essays written by high school students were rated by expert judges on overall writing quality using a standardized rubric. Expert coders manually counted the number and types of demonstratives (attended and unattended demonstratives) in each essay. These counts were used to predict the human scores of essay quality. The findings demonstrate that the use of unattended demonstratives as anaphoric references is disadvantageous to both reading time and referent identification. However, these disadvantages become advantages in terms of essay quality likely because linguistic complexity is a strong indicator of high proficiency writing. From a text processing and comprehension viewpoint, the findings indicate, then, that anaphoric reference is not always beneficial and does not always create a more cohesive text. In contrast, from a writing context, the use of unattended demonstratives leads to a more linguistically complex text, which generally equates to a higher quality text.     

Same topic,different genre: Elementary school children's mental representations of information embedded in narrative and expository texts

Using a sentence recognition task, we investigated whether elementary school children's (N = 92; M_age = 9.3 years, SD = 1.1 years) memory of the text surface, the textbase, and the situation model differed depending on whether the same information was embedded in an expository or a narrative text. Previous research with children that used narrative and expository texts dealing with different topics indicated beneficial effects narrative over expository texts regarding various indicators of processing on the levels of the textbase and the situation model. In contrast, our results did not indicate differences between narrative and expository texts for any of the levels of representation. Thus, the role of text topic in studies investigating the effect of genre on text comprehension should be investigated further.     

Prior knowledge,reading skill,and text cohesion in the comprehension of science texts

This study examined how text features (i.e., cohesion) and individual differences (i.e., reading skill and prior knowledge) contribute to biology text comprehension. College students with low and high levels of biology knowledge read two biology texts, one of which was high in cohesion and the other low in cohesion. The two groups were similar in reading skill. Participants' text comprehension was assessed with open-ended comprehension questions that measure different levels of comprehension (i.e., text-based, local-bridging, global-bridging). Results indicated: (a) reading a high-cohesion text improved text-based comprehension; (b) overall comprehension was positively correlated with participants' prior knowledge, and (c) the degree to which participants benefited from reading a high-cohesion text depended on participants' reading skill, such that skilled participants gained more from high-cohesion text.     

Comprehension in disciplinary learning: An examination of elementary readers' processing and recall

The authors explored elementary students' comprehension of informational text in disciplinary learning. Forty on-grade-level readers in Grades 2–5 participated. A priori and emergent coding was used to analyze 120 verbal protocols and 120 oral recalls. Analyses of variance and correlations showed students' processing and recall of procedural text contrasted with their processing and recall of biography or persuasive text. Also, second-grade students did not process informational text as actively or recall informational text as well as third- through fifth-grade students did. An expanded focus on students' comprehension of informational text in disciplinary learning and further study of the relationships among students' text use, text processing and recall, and development are warranted.     

Fostering integration of informational texts and virtual labs during inquiry-based learning

Inquiry-based learning allows students to learn about scientific phenomena in an exploratory way. Inquiry-based learning can take place in online environments in which students read informational texts and experiment in virtual labs. We conducted two studies using eye-tracking to examine the integration of these two sources of information for students from vocational education (78 and 71 participants, respectively, mean age of 13 years and 7 months). In Study 1, we examined whether the amount of time spent on reading text and on integrating the text content with information from a virtual lab (as measured via gaze switches between the text and the lab) affected the quality of the inquiry-based learning process in the lab (i.e., correctly designed experiments and testable hypotheses created) and the learning gain (increase in domain knowledge from pretest to posttest). Results showed, on average, a gain in domain knowledge. Pretest scores were related to posttest scores, and this relation was mediated by the score for correctly designed experiments in the lab. There was no relation between informational text reading time and inquiry process quality or learning gain, but more frequent integration was associated with a higher score for experimentation in the virtual lab, and more frequent integration attenuated the relation between pretest score and designing correct experiments. Integration could thus compensate for the negative effects of lower prior knowledge. In Study 2, we examined whether integration was stimulated by highlighting correspondences between the informational text and the virtual lab (i.e., signaling). Integration was higher than in Study 1, but this did not further improve the quality of the inquiry process or the learning gain. A general conclusion is that integration fosters inquiry-based learning, but that stimulating additional integration may not result in further improvement.     

Impact of text availability and question format on reading comprehension processes

We conducted two experiments to analyze how text availability and question format affect readers’ processes and performance on measures of expository text reading comprehension. Junior high school students read expository texts and answered both multiple choice and open-ended questions on a computer that recorded reading times and readers’ actions with Read&Answer software. The results showed that readers reread prior text segments during initial reading of the text more often when they knew that the text would be unavailable when answering questions than when they knew that the text would be available. In addition, readers made more search decisions in the text- available condition when answering open-ended questions than when answering multiple-choice questions. Regarding performance, we repeatedly found an interaction effect between availability and question format: text availability benefited the open-ended but not the multiple-choice format. We concluded that the two availability conditions are useful in assessing different discourse processes. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for the development of models of reading and new ways to assess reading literacy skills that emphasize purposeful reading.     

The influence of question type,text availability,answer confidence and language background on student comprehension of an expository text

Reading is an essential activity for learning at university, but lecturers are not always experienced in setting appropriate questions to test understanding of texts. In other words, their assessments may not be ‘constructively aligned’ with the learning outcomes they hope their students to exhibit. In examination conditions, questions may be set with insufficient time for re-reading available texts, thus drawing more on students' powers of recall than on deeper learning and comprehension. Previous research has been undertaken on reading comprehension generally, but no research has yet explored the interaction of factors such as text availability (re-reading of texts), text layout, question type and respondents' language background. This study explores the correctness of 50 participants' responses to a set reading task based on an expository text, and participants' confidence in giving those answers, in relation to four factors: the effects of question type; text availability; text layout; and language background. The main findings are that non-native speakers of English have more difficulty and less confidence in answering implicit questions and that reviewing the text has a significant effect on response correctness for implicit questions. The form of text layout did not show a significant effect, however. Our results have implications for lecturers who set readings and questions for comprehension and others who use reading comprehension as part of their ‘hidden curriculum’. Further research in this area is required to determine more precisely the effects of language background.     

The role text structure inference skill plays for eighth graders’ expository text comprehension

The present study investigated whether text structure inference skill (i.e., the ability to infer overall text structure) has unique predictive value for expository text comprehension on top of the variance accounted for by sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. Furthermore, it was examined whether the unique predictive value of text structure inference skill differs between monolingual and bilingual Dutch students or students who vary in reading proficiency, reading fluency or linguistic knowledge levels. One hundred fifty-one eighth graders took tests that tapped into their expository text comprehension, sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge, and text structure inference skill. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that text structure inference skill has no unique predictive value for eighth graders’ expository text comprehension controlling for reading fluency, linguistic knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. However, text structure inference skill has unique predictive value for expository text comprehension in models that do not include both knowledge of connectives and metacognitive knowledge as control variables, stressing the importance of these two cognitions for text structure inference skill. Moreover, the predictive value of text structure inference skill does not depend on readers’ language backgrounds or on their reading proficiency, reading fluency or vocabulary knowledge levels. We conclude our paper with the limitations of our study as well as the research and practical implications.     

Consistent results with the consistency hypothesis? The effects of epistemic beliefs on metacognitive processing

We explored relations between students’ epistemic beliefs, metacognitive monitoring and recall performance in the context of learning physics through metaphor. Eighty-three university undergraduate students completed questionnaires designed to measure their epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge about Newtonian physics. Students were epistemically profiled as rational, empirical, or metaphorical in their approaches to knowing. Using a think-aloud protocol, students read a text on Newton’s First and Third Laws. The text included metaphors as examples of the various laws described. Results revealed that students profiled as metaphorical engaged in more metacognitive processing compared to students profiled as rational or empirical. Moreover, path analyses revealed that metacognitive monitoring positively predicted recall performance. Results challenge Muis’ (2008) consistency hypothesis; the ways in which knowledge is represented in text may be the linking factor for relations between metacognitive monitoring and epistemic beliefs rather than the underlying epistemology of the domain.     

Resolving the Effects of Concreteness on Interest, Comprehension, and Learning Important Ideas From Text

This paper reviews research suggesting that interest and importance are separate constructs mediated by concreteness and mental imagery, especially in expository text or other genres where concreteness and importance often diverge. Important expository material can be relatively more interesting or less interesting. If important expository material is concrete it tends to be interesting and well recalled. If important expository material is abstract and not well linked to concrete elaboration or examples it tends to be less interesting and less well recalled. Concrete elaboration of abstract ideas tends to improve students' recall. There appears to be no harm in adding concrete detail to well structured, coherent text to promote interest unless enough is added so that a new text with a different coherence emerges. Making already concrete text more emotionally interesting may have little effect. Using a coherent text structure that adequately implies or signals importance and supporting important information with concrete explanation are key text design implications. Dual Coding Theory provides a systematic theoretical account of the findings in this area.