33 research outputs found
Translating advances in reading comprehension research to educational practice
The authors review five major findings in reading comprehension and their implications for educational practice. First, research suggests that comprehension skills are separable from decodingprocesses and important at early ages, suggesting that comprehension skills should be targeted early, even before the child learns to read. Second, there is an important distinction between readingprocesses and products, as well as their causal relationship: processes lead to certain products. Hence, instructional approaches and strategies focusing on processes are needed to improve studentsāreading performance (i.e., product). Third, inferences are a crucial component of skilled comprehension. Hence, children need scaffolding and remediation to learn to generate inferences, even when they know little about the text topic. Fourth, comprehension depends on a complex interaction between the reader, the characteristics of the text, and the instructional task, highlighting the need for careful selection of instructional materials for individual students and specific groups of students. Finally, educators may benefit from heightened awareness of the limitations and inadequacies of standardized reading comprehension assessments, as well as the multidimensionality of comprehension to better understand their studentsā particular strengths and weaknesses
Examining My-Side Bias During and After Reading Controversial Historical Accounts
The present study examines individualsā thinking during and after reading controversial historical accounts and the possible contribution of epistemic beliefs, emotions, and priorknowledge in this context. Young adults (n = 39) were asked to read two accounts about a recent war in their country, an own-side account ā from a historian of their ethnic group ā and an other-side account ā from a historian from the adversary ethnic group. Participants were asked to think-aloud and report their emotions during reading. After reading, participants were asked to write a summary. Results showed that participants exhibited my-side bias during reading and writing, while there were also interesting individual differences in epistemic beliefs and prior knowledge. Participants with evaluativist epistemic beliefs were less likely to show my-side bias in the writing task. Epistemic beliefs, along with prior knowledge and the emotion of anger, predicted also low-epistemic processing during reading of other-side text. The paper concludes with a discussion of the educational implications in promoting critical thinking about controversial issues in history
Epistemic perspective and online epistemic processing of evidence: Developmental and domain differences
Relations between epistemic perspective and online epistemic processing of evidence when reading a text were examined. Thirty-seven young adolescents and 24 graduate university students were asked to read and think-aloud with two texts, one in the history domain and the other in the science domain. Participants also completed a prior-knowledge test and an instrument assessing their epistemic perspective. Results showed that participants who exhibited an evaluativist epistemic perspective and high prior-knowledge used the epistemic standard of scientific research more than participants who held non-evaluativist epistemic perspective. Furthermore, an age-related developmental difference was observed, with adults using the epistemic standard of scientific research more than young adolescents. Domain differences were observed in both participantsā epistemic perspective and online epistemic processing. Participants overall engaged in online epistemic processing of evidence more in the history topic than in the science topic
Flattening the COVID-19 curve: Emotions mediate the effects of a persuasive message on preventive action
Introduction: Across four countries (Canada, USA, UK, and Italy), we explored the effects of persuasive messages on intended and actual preventive actions related to COVID-19, and the role of emotions as a potential mechanism for explaining these effects.
Methods: One thousand seventy-eight participants first reported their level of concern and emotions about COVID-19 and then received a positive persuasive text, negative persuasive text, or no text. After reading, participants reported their emotions about the pandemic and their willingness to take preventive action. One week following, the same participants reported the frequency with which they engaged in preventive action and behaviors that increased the risk of contracting COVID-19.
Results: Results revealed that the positive persuasive text significantly increased individualsā willingness to and actual engagement in preventive action and reduced risky behaviors 1 week following the intervention compared to the control condition. Moreover, significant differences were found between the positive persuasive text condition and negative persuasive text condition whereby individuals who read the positive text were more willing and actually engaged in more preventive action compared to those who read the negative text. No differences were found, however, at the 1-week follow-up for social distancing and isolation behaviors. Results also revealed that specific discrete emotions mediated relations between the effects of the texts and preventive action (both willing and actual).
Discussion: This research highlights the power of educational interventions to prompt behavioral change and has implications for pandemic-related interventions, government policy on health promotion messages, and future research
The COVID-19 Vaccine Communication Handbook. A practical guide for improving vaccine communication and fighting misinformation
This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents ā in short, itās for everyone who wants to know more about the COVID-19 vaccines, how to talk to others about them, how to challenge misinformation about the vaccines.
This handbook is self-contained but additionally provides access to a āwikiā of more detailed information
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Does Being an Expert Matter? The Influence of Source Expertise on Recognition Memory
The current information ecosystem has made it difficult to judge the veracity of information. Presumably, evaluating an informational sourceās expertise aids in this judgment process. However, whether these judgements influence memory for that information is unclear. In this study, we investigate the extent to which a source's expertise influences recognition memory for explanations given by that source. Participants viewed 20 vignettes describing events and two potential explanations for each event. Each explanation was either said by a source (domain expert vs. non-expert) or given without a source. Participants were exposed to both source and no-source conditions. We investigated whether participantsā recognition of explanations were predicted by condition and source expertise. Our findings indicated that neither condition nor source expertise influenced participants' performance on the recognition task. This suggests that people either do not attend to source in their evaluations of explanations or do not encode these evaluations
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A metric of childrenās inference-making difficulty during language comprehension
Reading comprehension research has identified sources of childrenās difficulty with inference-making: lack of semantic/content knowledge and logical reasoning difficulty. NLP tools modeling semantic knowledge (e.g. BERT) can predict adult inference-making, but it is unclear whether they can predict childrenās inference-making difficulty. In our ongoing study, we will examine whether our new inference difficulty metric can predict kindergarten studentsā inference-making, using empirical data from a classroom intervention (ELCII). Students were given verbal information on a topic and multiple-choice questions, which require students to draw an inference from two given scaffolds. To develop this metric, we will train BERT on childrenās books and ELCII content to compute an additive inference vector, the sum of the two vectorized scaffolds. The cosine distance between the additive and correct inferences may indicate inference difficulty. Results will indicate whether a probabilistic semantic space can model childrenās inferences or if other components (e.g. logic) should be considered
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Epistemic Beliefs, Language, and Sources: Interactive Effects on Belief and Trustof Scientific Information
Research suggests that peoples learning may be influenced by individual differences in their epistemic beliefs, such asFaith in Intuition (FiN), Need for Evidence (NfE), and belief that Truth is Political(TiP). This study investigated the extentto which these epistemic beliefs influenced belief in scientific information about global warming and trust in sources.Participants read statements about global warming and rated how much they believed the information and trusted thesource. Each statement was presented with a conservative, liberal, or scientific source and framed in certain or tentativelanguage. We found that epistemic beliefs significantly interacted with source and language tentativeness. For example,those with low FiN believed certain language statements more than tentative language statements. Those with low NfEbelieved conservative sources more than scientific or liberal sources. These findings demonstrate how individuals epistemicbeliefs interact with source and language factors to influence belief and trust of scientific information