Prose Comprehension Beyond The Word

When individuals read or listen to prose they try to understand what it means. This is quite obvious. However, the cognitive mechanisms that participate in prose comprehension are far from obvious. Even simple stories involve com plexities that have stymied many cognitive scientists. Why is prose comprehen sion so difficult to study? Perhaps because comprehension is guided by so many domains of knowledge. Perhaps because some critical mysteries of prose comprehension reside between the lines-in the mind of the comprehender. Ten years ago very few psychologists were willing to dig beyond the surface of explicit code in their studies of discourse processing. Tacit knowledge, world knowledge, inferences, and expectations were slippery notions that experimental psychologists managed to circumvent rather than understand. In many scientific circles it was taboo to investigate mechanisms and phenomena that are not directly governed by the physical stimulus. Fortunately, times have changed. Cognitive scientists are now vigorously exploring the puzzles of comprehension that lie beyond the word. The study of discourse processing is currently growing at a frenetic pace.

Reading Beyond Words is a down-to-earth reading textbook structured so that students can understand and use it easily, and to offer complete coverage of study-reading skills using materials from actual textbooks students will encounter. As the title suggests, Reading Beyond Words means not only comprehending what the words are saying, but to interpret, question, compare, and evaluate what a writer says.

This volume provides an overview of research from the learning sciences into understanding, enhancing, and measuring "deep comprehension" from a psychological, educational, and psychometric perspective. It describes the characteristics of deep comprehension, what techniques may be used to improve it, and how deep levels of comprehension may be distinguished from shallow ones. It includes research on personal-level variables; how intelligent tutors promote comprehension; and the latest developments in psychometrics. The volume will be of interest to senior undergraduate and graduate students of cognitive psychology, learning, cognition and instruction, and educational technology.

Dr. Kari-Lynn Winters is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Brock University in Ontario, Canada where she teaches drama-in-education and mentors teacher candidates. She holds a teaching degree from the University of Toronto, in regular and special education for children ages 3-13. She is also a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada (in Montreal), where she earned a certificate in technical theatre. Before completing her graduate degrees she taught in North Carolina for three years and in Toronto for 2 years. Her published work includes both scholarly texts and articles, and award winning picture books for children. Beyond Words reflects her research into the way in which arts can be effectively integrated with a reading program to teach and evaluate global reading comprehension strategies among less proficient readers. The project was undertaken with twelve third and fourth grade readers in a West Vancouver suburban public school for a total of seven months.

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Literacy Beyond Text Comprehension aims to systematically investigate how readers interpret reading tasks within a situation, and how that interpretation influences reading behavior and comprehension. Presenting a new model of REading as problem SOLVing (RESOLV), the authors describe reading comprehension in terms of how a reader adopts goals within a particular situation that then guide what is read, when, and how. By applying the RESOLV model to a range of reading situations, this book provides evidence to suggest that there is no unitary understanding of a task, because individuals bring their own goals and characteristics to the situation; as such, it demonstrates the importance of understanding how a reader (e.g., student, test-taker, employee completing a work task) represents the context and the specific assignment. Written by internationally recognized learning sciences scholars, Literacy Beyond Text Comprehension advances the state of the art in reading research, but also seeks to inform a broader range of audiences, including those interested in the teaching and the assessment of reading.

Published in 1984, this volume presents methodologies for studying the ongoing psychological processes that occur as a person reads a text, as well as discussing the major findings that these methodologies have produced, to provide a handbook of reading comprehension research techniques. Focusing on the comprehension processes that occur when a person is reading, rather than the representation that remains after the text has been read, the methodologies use measures such as reading times that reflect ongoing processes, rather than relying exclusively on conventional measures of memory performance such as recall. These methods make use of computer technology for rapid and flexible stimulus representation and data acquisition. This book will allow researchers and students to select appropriate methodologies to investigate a range of fascinating questions about reading comprehension.

The Handbook of Research on Reading Comprehension assembles researchers of reading comprehension, literacy, educational psychology, psychology, and neuroscience to document the most recent research on the topic. It summarizes the current body of research on theory, methods, instruction, and assessment, including coverage of landmark studies. Designed to deepen understanding of how past research can be applied and has influenced the present and to stimulate new thinking about reading comprehension, the volume is organized around seven themes: historical perspectives on reading comprehension theoretical perspectives changing views of text elements of reading comprehension assessing and teaching reading comprehension cultural impact on reading comprehension where to from here? This is an essential reference volume for the international community of reading researchers, reading psychologists, graduate students, and professionals working in the area of reading and literacy.