Prose Comprehension Research Articles

An Innovative Teaching Tool: Manga for KOMSAS’ Prose Comprehension

Studying literature encourages thinking both critically and creatively. It helps to understand and interpret life through the lens of prose, poems, essays, and novels. The KOMSAS genre of literary materials require good pedagogical practices to ensure academic success of a student. The pivotal focus of this study is to assess the advantages of using ‘Manga’ as a creative tool to teach KOMSAS or traditional Malay literary prose and to determine its effectiveness on students’ performance. The aim of the study was also to explore the impact of using ‘Manga’ to enhance creativity among students in the classroom where traditional prose comprehension is taught. A quasi-experimental design was chosen as methodology and a study was conducted with high school students of Form Four. The research instrument involved a statistical achievement test. Findings from this research indicated that there were positive changes in the performance of students who used this Manga module. Teaching methods which could stimulate students’ interest in learning were helpful for students. Additionally, this study also found that students’ perception towards the teaching methods used by the teachers influenced their performance The main finding also highlighted students’ increased creativity when ‘Manga’ was used as a pedagogical tool. Teachers and collaborators can use this study as a point of reference when promoting ‘Manga’ as a creative device to teach Malay traditional prose in today’s classroom.

Discovery Engine for Finding Hidden Connections in Prose Comprehension from References

Reading is one of the essential practices of modern human learning. Comprehending prose text simply from the available text is particularly challenging as in general the comprehension of prose requires the use of external knowledge or references. Although the processes of reading comprehension have been widely studied in the field of psychology, no algorithm level models for comprehension have yet to be developed. This paper has proposed a comprehension engine consisting of knowledge induction which connects the knowledge space by augmenting associations within it. The connections are achieved through the automatic incremental reading of external references and the capturing of high familiarity knowledge associations between prose concepts. The Ontology Engine is used to find lexical knowledge associations amongst concept pairs, with the objective being to obtain a knowledge space graph with a single giant component to establish a base model for prose comprehension. The comprehension engine is evaluated through experiments with various selected prose texts. Akin to human readers, it could mine reference texts from modern knowledge corpuses such as Wikipedia and WordNet. The results demonstrate the potential efficiency of using the comprehension engine that enhances the quality of reading comprehension in addition to reducing reading time. This comprehension engine is considered the first algorithm level model for comprehension compared with existing works.

Boundary conditions for the effect of signaling on the prose comprehension of first-year high school students and college students

Boundary conditions for the effect of signaling on the prose comprehension of first-year high school students and college students

Health and Functional Literacy in Physical Rehabilitation Patients.

Background:People with disabilities, who face multiple barriers to care, experience health disparities, yet few studies have measured health literacy in this population.Objective:This study evaluated functional literacy, health literacy, fluid cognitive function, and self-reported health in people who live in community dwellings with spinal cord injury, stroke, or traumatic brain injury.Methods:Participants with a traumatic spinal cord injury, stroke, or traumatic brain injury, one-year postinjury, and age 18 to 85 years, completed a battery of instruments at three medical centers in the Midwestern U.S.: functional literacy (word recognition, vocabulary knowledge), health literacy (comprehension of prose, document, and quantitative health information), fluid cognitive function (memory, executive function, and processing speed), and patient-reported outcomes (mobility, fatigue, sadness, anxiety, social function, and overall health).Key Results:There were strong correlations between functional literacy, health literacy, and fluid cognitive function. After adjustment for sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, higher health literacy was associated with better mobility, less anxiety, and better overall health; higher functional literacy was associated with less anxiety and better overall health; and higher fluid cognitive function was associated with better mobility, less sadness, better social function, and better overall health.Conclusions:To effectively address limited health literacy among people with spinal cord injury, stroke, and traumatic brain injury, and ensure that they are able to be informed partners in their health care, intervention is required at the level of patients, providers, and health care delivery systems. A special consideration is to ensure that health information is both well-targeted to people's health literacy levels and accessible for people with a range of physical, cognitive, and sensory limitations. The multimedia self-administered health literacy measure used in this study could be useful to rehabilitation providers and designers of health information and interfaces. [Health Literacy Research and Practice. 2017;1(2):e71–e85.]Plain Language Summary:Health literacy represents people's abilities to obtain, understand, and use health information to make informed decisions about their health and health care. People with disabilities face physical, attitudinal, economic, and structural barriers to care. Consideration of health literacy in rehabilitation practice can enhance the effectiveness of the patient-clinician relationship and help address the needs of this population.

Effects of the Somebody-Wanted-But-So (SWBS) Chart as a Text Structure-based Technique on Second Language Narrative Prose Comprehension

Effects of the Somebody-Wanted-But-So (SWBS) Chart as a Text Structure-based Technique on Second Language Narrative Prose Comprehension

FUNCTIONS OF PERSONAL NAMES IN LATEST LATVIAN POETRY

FUNCTIONS OF PERSONAL NAMES IN LATEST LATVIAN POETRY

Self-questioning and prose comprehension : A sample case of ESL reading

An experiment was conducted to find out if self-questioning as a reading strategy would help improve comprehension of prose texts in English, a second language for Filipinos. Following a pretest-posttest design, students enrolled in Developmental Reading were randomly assigned to the control group, which read the assigned text, and the experimental group, which used self-questioning as a reading strategy. The control and experimental groups took the same test in the pretest and posttest and their performances were compared. Overall, the experiment showed that self-questioning did not have a significant effect on comprehension of a prose text in English. Although results showed that verbal ability was a factor in the ability to generate questions, the type and number of questions asked were not significant factors in test performance. The cultural background of the participants, time constraints, the method of comprehension evaluation used by the study, and the nature and duration of question-formulation training could all help to explain the results achieved.

Aging and memory for music: A review.

People of all ages enjoy listening to music, yet most research inmusical development has concentrated on infancy through childhood. Our recent research program examined various aspects of music cognition younger (ages 18 through 30) and older adults (ages 60 through 80) with varying amounts of musical experience. The studies investigated the independent and combined influences of age and experience on a wide assortment of long and short-term memory tasks. Results showed that some musical tasks reflect the same age-related declines as seen nonmusical tasks, and musical training does not reduce these age-related declines. In other tasks, experience differences were larger than age differences; some cases, age differences were nonexistent. The analysis considers how aging and experience may affect different aspects of cognition, and the paper concludes by pointing out the many musical activities that even nonmusical seniors are well equipped to succeed at and enjoy. Why study age differences memory for music? If shear neglect of a topic can justify it being studied, then surely our question is answered. The voluminous literature on age differences memory includes only a handful of studies that use musical materials. Recent reviews of this Ii terature by Anderson and Craik (2000), Balota, Dolan, and Duchek (2000), and Backman, Small, and Wahlin (2001 ) do not mention music, and another review by Zacks, Hasher, & Li (2000) mentions only one relevant study. Similarly, only rarely do music cognition journals carry articles concerning age differences. It is clear that we know little about music cognition old age. But neglect of the problem is only one reason why it needs to be addressed. Several additional reasons come readily to mind. First, everyday observation suggests that older adults enjoy and participate musical activities. Musical activities have an overall positive effect among people suffering from dementia (Koger, Chapin, & Brotons, 1999) as well among their healthy peers (Darrough & Boswell, 1992). A survey by Gibbons ( 1982) found that 84% of a sample of 152 healthy elderly people wished to improve their musical skills. MUsiC therapists have published suggestions for music programs with the elderly (Bell, 1987; Clair, 1996; Glassman, 1983; Hintz, 2000). However, the dearth of research makes it difficult for therapists to really understand the musical capabilities of their elderly clients. Among the questions that basic research on music and aging can help answer is whether a person can maintain or even improve her or his skill level if given musical training, and to what extent musical programs for older adults should emphasize exposure to familiar vs. new pieces and styles. second, music may be an ideal domain to study the aging of domainspecific processes compared to the aging of general-purpose operations of learning and memory. For example, researchers currently are interested changes short-term, or working memory with age. Not only are investigators studying the nature of age differences working memory itself, they also are examining whether deficits working memory processes may underlie age differences long-term memory, prose comprehension, and other cognitive domains. Yet tests of working memory almost always use verbal or visuospatial stimuli, and, for this reason, the dominant model of working memory (Baddeley, 1986) distinguishes only three basic components: a phonological loop, a visuospatial scratchpad, and a central executive. The familiar experience of having a tune in our head suggests the operation of a melodic (Berz, 1995) that might show age differences and have functional importance for a variety of music-related.activities including learning new tunes, recalling old tunes, and, perhaps most important, simply appreciating music. To examine this loop across the adult lifespan is certainly a task that is well worth our time. …

Levels of comprehension of scientific prose: the role of text variables

This research investigates the role played on shallow and deep levels of comprehension by textual changes that are aimed at: (a) improving the relationships within text ideas, and (b) producing better links between text ideas and the reader's knowledge. Four versions of a long physics passage were elaborated combining both kinds of textual changes. Four groups of tenth graders were each given one of the four versions. Different measures representative of these levels of comprehension were taken: getting main ideas, recall, and problem solving. The results indicated that: (a) main idea performance was affected by improving the relationships within text ideas, (b) both textual changes contributed separately to recall, and (c) problem solving increased only when the two changes were presented together.

説明文理解における要点を表わす図表の役割

本研究では, 説明文の理解に文章の要点を示した図表がおよぼす影響について検討した。薬の知識のない大学生に, 架空の薬の種類と各薬の特徴について説明された文章を読ませた。その際, 文章の要点をまとめた図表 (樹形図と表) を付加する群, 効果を比較対照するものとして図表を文章形式に書き直した要約文を付加する群, 文章のみを読む群を設定した。図表の効果をより正確に把握するため, 説明文のタイプを考慮に入れ, 同じ内容だが構成の異なる2つの説明文を用い, 文章の構成に拘わらず図表による影響があるかどうかを検討した。文章のタイプとして薬別に特徴を説明する構成の薬別説明文乳特徴別に薬間の関係を示す構成の特徴別説明文を用いた。実験1では, 文章のタイプに拘わらず, 図表と要約はともに要点の情報の再生を促進することが示され, 図表や要約という要点を表わす補助は要点の情報に読み手の注意を向けさせることが示唆された。さらに図表は要約よりも各文章で明示的に書かれていない関係を補って再生することが示され, 図表が2次元の形式で情報を表わしていることによる有効性が示された。実験2では, 再認課題により実験1の結果が追認された。さらに文章タイプに拘わらず, 文章から得た情報を利用することを求めた応用問題で図表は要約よりも促進効果があり, 図表が深い理解にも関わっていることを示唆した。図表は2次元の形式を用いて情報を位置的に表わしているため, 文章中で明示的に書かれていない関係を表わすことができるという特性があり, 文章よりも暗黙の関係を明示化するための推論や事実の計算の効率が良いと考えられる。この利点より, 図表は要約よりも説明文の理解を促進したと考えられる。

The relevance of multiple‐choice reading test data in studying expository passage comprehension: The saga of a 15 year effort towards an experimental/correlational merger

This article argues for the usefulness of merging experimental and correlational approaches in the study of expository prose comprehension. Towards this end I review the studies my colleagues and I have completed in recent years. In the course of reviewing the effects of rhetorical structure, concreteness/abstractness of texts, and other variables, it is shown that the correlational approach yields results similar to the experimental literature. But more importantly, the vast data banks associated with multiple‐choice tests allow us to explore some of the variance that exists across passages and across student ability levels. The types of significant variables studied in explaining especially main idea identification raise issues of how these results might impinge on several prominent theories of prose comprehension. Several suggestions for future research are made.

Sex differences in intelligence. Implications for education.

Sex differences in intelligence is among the most politically volatile topics in contemporary psychology. Although no single finding has unanimous support, conclusions from multiple studies suggest that females, on average, score higher on tasks that require rapid access to and use of phonological and semantic information in long-term memory, production and comprehension of complex prose, fine motor skills, and perceptual speed. Males, on average, score higher on tasks that require transformations in visual-spatial working memory, motor skills involved in aiming, spatiotemporal responding, and fluid reasoning, especially in abstract mathematical and scientific domains. Males, however, are also over-represented in the low-ability end of several distributions, including mental retardation, attention disorders, dyslexia, stuttering, and delayed speech. A psychobiosocial model that is based on the inextricable links between the biological bases of intelligence and environmental events is proposed as an alternative to nature-nurture dichotomies. Societal implications and applications to teaching and learning are suggested.

Reflections on 'Promoting Thinking Skills of Students With Learning Disabilities: Effects on Recall and Comprehension of Expository Prose'

For over a decade, we have been interested in the acquisition and maintenance of verbal associations by students with mild disabilities, including learning disabil- ities (LD), mild mental retardation, and behavioral disorders or emotional disturbance. We have felt that failure to make important cognitive "connections" between already known and to-be-learned information was a primary character- istic of students referred to special education. In this reflection piece, we describe how we think both mnemonic strategies and elaborative interrogation address this problem.

Promoting Thinking Skills of Students With Learning Disabilities: Effects on Recall and Comprehension of Expository Prose

Twenty-nine students with learning disabilities read prose passages concerning facts about characteristics of vertebrate animals. Students in the control condition were told to take time after reading each sentence to try hard to remember the content. In the experimental condition, students were prompted to reason actively through information presented in each sentence. Results suggested that amount of recall of actual information did not differ by experimental condition; however, students trained in thinking skills produced significantly more correct explanations of that information than did students in the control condition. Nevertheless, student performance in both conditions was lower than found in previous investigations, in which students were directly coached and prompted to reason through school content. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.

The effect of semantic mapping instruction on prose comprehension of below‐level college readers

Abstract College freshmen participating in a remedial reading program were assigned to one of three reading instruction conditions: direct instruction in the use of mapping strategies (N = 16); Herber's (1978) functional approach (N = 12); or a control condition involving reading and discussing expository essays (N = 12). Students were tested before and after the 8‐week intervention on comprehension of textually explicit, textually implicit, and scriptally implicit questions. Students exposed to the mapping intervention demonstrated superior posttreatment performance on both textually explicit and textually implicit questions. No significant differences were observed on scriptally implicit questions. Results were interpreted as indicating the advantages of semantic mapping instruction for below‐level readers.

Discourse comprehension and problem solving: decisions about the treatment of breast cancer by women across the life span.

The 1st study examined the decision making and prose comprehension of 94 women interacting with an authentic, unfolding health scenario about breast cancer. The 2nd study involved questionnaire data focusing on the decisions made by 75 women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Two major findings emerged from this laboratory and survey research. First, older women sought less information when making treatment decisions about breast cancer. However, the outcome of those decisions were equivalent to those of younger women. Second, older women made these decisions faster than younger women. In addition, treatment decisions were related to prose processing, the type of information underlined as important while reading as well as the type of information remembered about various treatment options.

Relationships Between Cognitive Styles and Reading Comprehension of Expository Text of African American Male Students

PURPOSE OF THE STUDY The present study was designed to generate information about the individual differences in cognitive styles of African American male students at the elementary school level and to explore the implications of these differences for reading comprehension processes, especially as they relate to comprehension of expository text. These differences were analyzed utilizing the cognitive style dimension framework, which maintains that broad dimensions of perceptual functioning may be reflected in an individual's cognitive activities. Additional direction was gleaned from the extensive research of Witkin and colleagues on the field-dependence-independence dimension of cognitive style (Witkin, Dyk, Faterson, Goodenough, & Karp, 1962; Witkin, Goodenough, & Oltman, 1979). This study addresses the following research questions: What is the relationship between low field-independent and high field-independent cognitive styles and reading comprehension of expository text? More specifically, how does this relationship affect the reading achievement of a sample group of fourth-grade African American male students from three elementary schools in a medium-sized urban public school district in southeast Michigan? The research hypothesis is that high field-independent African American males will demonstrate higher raw scores on a test of comprehension of expository prose than will their low field-independent counterparts. The corresponding null hypothesis is that high and low field-independent African American males will demonstrate no statistically significant differences in their raw scores. RELATED LITERATURE Upon contrasting aspects of African and African American culture with European and European culture, Milliard (1976, 1992) contends that unique cognitive and behavioral style factors can be identified among African American populations. He further asserts the existence of a unique African American core culture that is shared by most African Americans to a greater or lesser degree and that can be empirically described. Concurrence with this view can be drawn from the work of Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, and Tipton (1985), Cohen (1969), Cole and Scribner (1974), Erny (1968), Kochman (1981), Ramirez and Price-Williams (1974), Shade (1981, 1982), Smitherman (1977), and Vass (1979). More specifically, Hale-Benson (1982) suggests that African Americans possess a particular cognitive style that influences the way they learn and perform in school. She notes that a new direction of investigation suggests that cognition is social as well as biological. . .[and] looks at the relationship between one's culture and the kinds of skills one develops (p. 23). According to Banks (1988), the works of Hale-Benson and Milliard have been heavily influenced by Witkin's (1950, 1962) cognitive style theory as well as by Cohen's (1969) learning styles conceptualization. In 1950, Witkin hypothesized the existence of two cognitive styles: field-independent and field-dependent. Field-independent students, he claimed, are able to structure and make sense out of various tasks, do not have to be directed, are interested in and able to handle abstract and theoretical concepts, and take a hypothesis-testing approach to learning. By contrast, field-dependent students seem to need cues from the environment in order to solve problems; they have trouble providing their own structure and function best in people-oriented settings (Witkin et al., 1977). Cohen identified two conceptual styles, analytic and relational, the former of which is related to Witkin's field-independent concept while the latter is similar to the fielddependent concept. Shade's (1983,1986) investigations focus on whether or not differences in achievement for students with different cognitive styles can be determined and measured. She concludes that high achievers are more field-independent, object-oriented, analytical, and linear thinkers. …

The "potential" contributions of cognitive behavior modification to literacy training for deaf students.

This article will address the background and "potential" use of Cognitive Behavior Modification (CBM) as an approach for increasing literacy skills among deaf people. We highlight the word "potential" because most CBM interventions with the deaf have been quite preliminary. But before we consider this "potential" let us first examine the role illiteracy plays for both deaf and hearing adults as they enter the workforce today. For many decades, the literature has documented significant academic and employment underachievement among the deaf population. The itemization of this underachievement, relative to their hearing counterparts, sets the stage for the present proposal and represents a "call to action" for all who are interested in nurturing literacy in deaf children and adults. Consider the following findings on the relative levels of academic underachievement of the deaf population. 1. Thirty percent of students with hearing impairment exit school without a diploma or certificate (Nash, 1992). 2. The average math achievement level at secondary school graduation for deaf students is only at the sixth to seventh grades (Allen, 1986). 3. The reading achievement test scores of deaf children continue to lag far behind those of hearing students, with reading achievement test scores remaining at approximately the third-grade level (Allen, 1986). While many members of the deaf community rise above these academic limitations, for those who do not the financial, social, and personal consequences can be substantial. A major contributing factor to the bleak employment picture is an individual's level of literacy. We are using this term "literacy" in its broadest meaning to include not only the comprehension of prose in its various forms, but also literacy in reading the demands and expectations of social and employment situations.

Causal and Epiphenomenal Use of the Selective Attention Strategy in Prose Comprehension

The purpose of this study is to differentiate between causal and epiphenomenal uses of selective attention in a prose learning situation. Attention is defined along two continua for the purposes of the study: attention duration (reflected by reading times) and attention intensity (reflected by probe reaction times). Forty-eight, more successful and less successful, sixth graders read a short passage about a nature walk after being assigned one of two reading objectives. Subjects learned and recalled text elements made salient by the objective instructions better than other text elements. Furthermore, they focused attention duration on those same text elements. Causal analyses revealed that there was no causal relation among salience, attention, and learning for any of these readers. For the more successful readers, the relation was epiphenomenal; attention appeared in the vicinity of salient text items but was not directly related to subjects′ learning of them. For the less successful readers, the relation was weak in all areas. The results are discussed in terms of the development of the ability to effectively use selective attention and the notion of using attention duration as an indicator of information processing in studies dealing with locating and learning written information.

The Effects of Summarization Instruction on Text Comprehension of Students with Learning Disabilities

This study examined the effectiveness of a summarization strategy for increasing comprehension of expository prose in students with learning disabilities. Thirty students with learning disabilities from Grades 6 through 9 were randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. In addition, 15 students without disabilities served as a normal comparison group for comprehension. Students in the experimental condition were trained to criterion on five rules of summarization. Direct instruction in the summarization strategy significantly increased reading comprehension of the students in the experimental group. Strategy usage was maintained over time, and students were reported to generalize its use.