Impact of question-answering tasks on search processes and reading comprehension

This study examined the effect of (a) high- and low-level questions and (b) reading the text before the questions asked on performance, delayed text recall, and deep text comprehension, as well as on specific text-inspection patterns. Participants were 37 undergraduate students who answered either high- or low-level questions using the software Read&Answer to read and answer questions on the computer screen. Additionally, half of the sample read first a text and then answered the questions (reading-first condition), whereas the other half answered the questions without having read the text in advance (no-reading-first condition). All participants had the text available to search for the answer. Results indicated that high-level questions facilitated deep comprehension but not immediate performance or delayed recall of text, independently of the reading condition, and that high- and low-level questions differentially affected text-inspection patterns.     

Learning Disabilities in Guatemala and Spain: A Cross‐National Study of the Prevalence and Cognitive Processes Associated with Reading and Spelling Disabilities

The main purposes of this research were twofold. We examined the samenesses about learning disabilities (LD) in Guatemala and Spain, two countries with the same language but cultural, political, and educational differences, first analyzing data about the prevalence of reading and spelling disabilities in Guatemala City and the Spanish region of the Canary Islands. The focus of the second study was to determine whether there are cross‐national patterns of significant differences in cognitive processes associated with reading and spelling disabilities from a developmental approach in these two cultural contexts. We found some differences in the prevalence of specific LD in reading between both countries but we did not find significant differences between Guatemalan and Spanish reading‐disabled children in cognitive processes that are involved in reading and spelling acquisition in spite of the cultural and educational differences between the two countries.     

Language and theory of mind: a study of deaf children

Theory-of-mind (ToM) abilities were studied in 176 deaf children aged 3 years 11 months to 8 years 3 months who use either American Sign Language (ASL) or oral English, with hearing parents or deaf parents. A battery of tasks tapping understanding of false belief and knowledge state and language skills, ASL or English, was given to each child. There was a significant delay on ToM tasks in deaf children of hearing parents, who typically demonstrate language delays, regardless of whether they used spoken English or ASL. In contrast, deaf children from deaf families performed identically to same-aged hearing controls (N=42). Both vocabulary and understanding syntactic complements were significant independent predictors of success on verbal and low-verbal ToM tasks.     

Structuring collaboration in mixed-ability groups to promote verbal interaction,learning, and motivation of average-ability students

Average-ability students often do not take full advantage of learning in mixed-ability groups because they hardly engage in the group interaction. This study examined whether structuring collaboration by group roles and ground rules for helping behavior might help overcome this participatory inequality. In a plant biology course, heterogeneously grouped fourth-grade boys (n=164) were randomly assigned to a structured collaboration condition or an unconstrained comparison condition. Results indicated positive effects of structured collaboration on average-ability students’ achievement, motivation, and contribution to the group interaction. Another positive result was that structuring collaboration did not lower the scores of the high and low-ability students on these measures.