Does Cooperative Use of Reading Strategies lead to Improved Text Comprehension?

Comprehending texts usually requires students in primary education to deploy reading strategies, especially when texts are difficult. The dearth of possible reading strategies might overwhelm the individual and may actually detract from rather than add to text comprehension. In this study, students worked together either unstructured or structured. In the structured cooperative reading condition, participants each received a card that summarized which phase of the reading process that participant was responsible for. Three hundred and twenty-seven students were assigned to either an unstructured group, a structured group or a control wherein students read individually. The expectation was that students who could work together, especially those who only had to focus on a specific set of reading strategies, would outperform students in the control condition and would experience less mental effort. The results are mostly contrary to these expectations, as individuals outperformed group-members. With regards to mental-effort, text-difficulty proved to be an influential factor.</p

Long-Term Effects of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on Student Academic Performance:A Meta-Analysis

Meta-analyses have shown the positive effects of strategy instruction on student performance; however, little meta-analytical research has been conducted on its long-term effects. We examined the long-term effects of 48 metacognitive strategy instruction interventions on student academic performance. The results show a very small increase of the effect at long-term compared with the posttest effects. The instruction effect at posttest increased from Hedges’ g = 0.50 to 0.63 at follow-up test. Moderator analyses showed that low SES students benefited the most at long-term. Furthermore, instructions including the cognitive strategy ‘rehearsal’ had lower long-term effects compared to interventions without this component. Other specific strategies (within categories metacognitive, cognitive, management, or motivational) did not moderate the overall positive long-term effect of metacognitive strategy instructions. Particular attributes of the intervention –subject domain, measurement instrument, duration, time between posttest and follow-up test, and cooperation – neither had an impact on the follow-up effect

Differential effects of long-term aerobic versus cognitively-engaging physical activity on children's visuospatial working memory related brain activation:A cluster RCT

Different types of physical activity are thought to differentially affect children's brain activation, via physiological mechanisms, or by activating similar brain areas during physical and cognitive tasks. Despite many behavioral studies relying on these mechanisms, they have been rarely studied. This study looks at both mechanisms simultaneously, by examining effects of two physical activity interventions (aerobic vs. cognitively-engaging) on children's brain activation. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data of 62 children (48.4% boys, mean age 9.2 years) was analyzed. Children's visuospatial working memory related brain activity patterns were tested using a Spatial Span Task before and after the 14-week interventions consisting of four physical education lessons per week. The control group followed their regular program of two lessons per week. Analyses of activation patterns in SPM 12.0 revealed no activation changes between pretest and posttest (p > .05), and no differences between the three conditions in pretest-posttest changes in brain activation (p > .05). Large inter-individual differences were found, suggesting that not every child benefited from the interventions in the same way. To get more insight into the assumed mechanisms, further research is needed to understand whether, when, for whom, and how physical activity results in changed brain activation patterns

Relationships between gross motor skills, cardiovascular fitness, and visuospatial working memory-related brain activation in 8-to 10-year-old children

Relationships between gross motor skills and cardiovascular fitness with visuospatial working memory (VSWM) in children are hypothesized to be mediated by underlying functional brain mechanisms. Because there is little experimental evidence to support this mechanism, the present study was designed to investigate the relationships of gross motor skills and cardiovascular fitness with VSWM-related brain activation in 8- to 10-year-old children. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data obtained during a VSWM-task were analyzed for 80 children from grades 3 (47.5%) and 4 of 21 primary schools in the Netherlands (51.3% girls). Gross motor skills (Korper Koordinationstest für Kinder and Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency - 2nd Edition) and cardiovascular fitness (20-meter Shuttle Run Test) were assessed. VSWM-related brain activation was found in a network involving the angular gyrus, the superior parietal cortex, and the thalamus; deactivation was found in the inferior and middle temporal gyri. Although behavioral results showed significant relations of gross motor skills and cardiovascular fitness with VSWM performance, gross motor skills and cardiovascular fitness were not related to VSWM-related brain activation. Therefore, we could not confirm the hypothesis that brain activation underlies the relationship of gross motor skills and cardiovascular fitness with VSWM performance. Our results suggest that either the effects of physical activity on cognition do not necessarily go via changes in gross motor skills and/or cardiovascular fitness, or that brain activation patterns as measured with the blood-oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) signal may not be the mechanism underlying the relationships of gross motor skills and cardiovascular fitness with VSWM