Higher-level Comprehension Research Articles

Symmetries and asymmetries in children’s peer-group reading discussions

This paper reports a research project exploring children’s peer interactions in group reading discussions where a teacher was not present as an authoritative guide. This context reflects a reality of classroom teaching where most children in the class are completing tasks independently while the teacher is working other groups. In the study, four quartets of ten year-old children in the UK and Mexico were recorded as they discussed different texts together and this paper reports the findings from their engagement with The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan. In the paper, we focus on the symmetries and asymmetries apparent in the children’s peer talk to consider how they engage together to make meaning from the text they are reading. To this end we focus on two strands of analysis related to children’s talk within their groups: (a) the function of utterances within their speech turns; and (b) the dynamics of the interaction, that is, the organisation of the talk into topical episodes. By considering these two strands of analysis, we are able to illuminate the nuances of a/symmetries in small-group reading contexts as we concentrate on how the children use language and action to influence the direction of, and contribute to, the discussions. The results find children authoritatively shifted the discussion forward into new topics using different means, and displayed evidence of high-level comprehension as they engaged with the ideas of each other. The two strands of analysis complemented each other as they illustrated not only the resources the children drew on to shift the movement of the discussion, but how their language enabled this movement forward. The results also highlighted differences in how the children perceived their goals and responsibilities within the task and groups.

Learning to Speak Up for Patient Safety: Interprofessional Scenarios for Training Future Healthcare Professionals.

Background:Preventable medical errors represent a leading cause of death in the United States. Effective undergraduate medical education (UME) strategies are needed to train medical students in error prevention, early identification of potential errors, and proactive communication. To address this need, a team of faculty from A.T. Still University’s School of Osteopathic Medicine in Arizona developed four digital patient safety case scenarios for second-year medical students. These scenarios were designed to integrate interprofessional collaboration and patient safety principles, increase student ability to identify potential errors, and promote proactive communication skills.Methods:Faculty used Qualtrics to create four digital case scenarios on patient safety covering the following domains: communicating about potential drug-to-drug interactions; effective handoffs; human factors errors, such as fatigue, illness, and stress; and conflicts with supervising resident. In fall 2018, 97 second-year medical students completed the entire safety module in dyad or triad teams. As they worked through each case study, student teams completed 11 assessment questions with instant feedback, and participated in short case debrief discussions. Next, each individual student took a 12-question post-test to assess learning. Descriptive statistics were reviewed for the assessment questions, and case critical thinking discussion answers were reviewed to evaluate student comprehension.Results:The mean score for the module was 95.5% (SD= 6.36%, range = 75%-100%). Seventy-eight students completed the post-test, which had a mean score of 96.5% (SD = 6.51%, range = 66.7%-100%). Student written responses to the four case critical thinking discussion prompts indicated a high level of comprehension.Conclusion:Our results demonstrated that digital case studies can provide an innovative mechanism to introduce key patient safety concepts and experiential practice of interprofessional communication in early UME. Our design and implementation of these engaging interprofessional patient safety training modules provided an opportunity for students to learn key communication and safety concepts in small teams. This training method was cost-effective and could be replicated in other online learning or blended learning environments for a wide range of health professions.

READING SKILLS CAN PREDICT THE PROGRAMMING PERFORMANCE OF NOVICES: AN EYE-TRACKING STUDY

Due to the character of programming languages, reading ability may have more impact on learning to program than on learning in other subjects. This paper describes an exploratory study of the relationship between reading skills, as perceived through eye tracking, and the ability to program. An empirical investigation into this relationship determined that students with inadequate reading skills are at risk of failing at introductory programming. As an explanation for the effect of reading ability on learning to program, we argue that a programming language is a special high-level written language and that using it requires high levels of comprehension, inferencing, selective attention, organising and reflecting. As a result, a student’s reading ability will have a considerable effect on learning to program. Lack of reading skills may therefore be a factor that affect students’ ability to learn to program. Eye tracking can expose reading skills and, therefore, be used to identify at-risk introductory programming students. The practical contribution of this research is the demonstration of how eye tracking can reveal reading problems among programming students. We relate these reading problems to their programming performance, providing a theoretical account of the connection. The results suggest that efforts to improve reading skills could have a positive impact on learning to program.

Butterfly Family Detection and Identification using Convolutional Neural Network for Lepidopterology

Lepidopterology is a branch of entomology concerning the scientific study of moths and the three superfamilies of butterflies. The project aims to help biology students in identifying butterfly without harming the insect. In the studies of lepidopterology, the students normally need to capture the butterflies with nets and dissect the insect to identify its family types. Computer vision is a study on how computers can be used to make high-level comprehension from the input of digital image and videos. By utilizing the latest Image Processing technique, it can identify the correct species of butterfly with high accuracy by using layers of node in a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The work process starts with data acquisition (mining the butterfly image automatically from google image search), pre-processing (converting image format and rotation), analyzing and understanding digital images (group images into folders), and to make assumptions of the high complication data from the real world in the process of producing numerical information that can be comprehend by machines in order to form conclusions. Benefits of using CNN is to reduce the need for human and physical intervention in identifying each of the butterfly characters. This makes it easier to expand the database in the future. The image is acquired using Fatkun Batch Downloader to download large number of images. The project is develop using Tensorflow in Ubuntu operating system and interface is in HTML connected to the Python script via Flask. The results of the experiment show that CNN can identify with 92.7 percent of final accuracy with learning saturation (overfitting) of 500 cycle. While testing results shows 62.5 percent of accuracy in predicting new datasets.

A STUDY OF STUDENTS' GROUP DIALOGUES ON THE USE OF HIGH-LEVEL COMPREHENSION FEATURES IN AN EFL READING CLASS

This study aimed to examine junior college students' group dialogues on the use of high-level comprehension features in an EFL reading class. The participants were one high-ability group and one low-ability group in terms of discussion proficiency. Eight representative discussions conducted in the students' first language served as the major data source, which were analyzed for discourse features linked to high-level thinking and comprehension, based on the criteria identified by Soter et al. (2008). Interviews and students' reading logs were collected to provide supporting evidence of how the EFL learners undertook their group reading tasks. The results revealed that both focus groups, to some extent, were able to incorporate all discourse features that indicate high-level learning and comprehension of texts without regard to discussion proficiency. The major differences were that the high-ability group had more uptake questions, whereas the low-ability group engaged in longer and more numerous episodes of elaborated explanations and of exploratory talk. That the low-ability group exhibited more talk and indicators of quality discussion than the high-ability group could be possibly explained with the genre of reading materials, personal belief about reading stories, and the use of nonverbal information and of personal connections. Despite the differences, the two groups demonstrated the language of high-level comprehension to ＂interthink＂ deeply about the text. The study concludes that through incorporating discourse features linked to high-level comprehension, students could guide one another toward deeper engagement with the text in group reading.

What Can Eye Movements Tell Us about Higher Level Comprehension?

The majority of eye tracking studies in reading are on issues dealing with word level or sentence level comprehension. By comparison, relatively few eye tracking studies of reading examine questions related to higher level comprehension in processing of longer texts. We present data from an eye tracking study of anaphor resolution in order to examine specific issues related to this discourse phenomenon and to raise more general methodological and theoretical issues in eye tracking studies of discourse processing. This includes matters related to the design of materials as well as the interpretation of measures with regard to underlying comprehension processes. In addition, we provide several examples from eye tracking studies of discourse to demonstrate the kinds of questions that may be addressed with this methodology, particularly with respect to the temporality of processing in higher level comprehension and how such questions correspond to recent theoretical arguments in the field.

Comprehension of Online Educational Material Regarding Orofacial Clefts.

Cleft lip and palate are among the common birth defects in the United States. Management is complex and may be difficult for parents and patients to understand. The goal of this study was to evaluate the readability of online educational material provided by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) and the American Cleft Palate-Craniofacial Association (ACPA) websites regarding cleft lip and palate and to assess parents' comprehension. Parents of children younger than 10 years of age presenting to the plastic and reconstructive surgery clinic at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital for conditions other than cleft lip and palate were recruited for participation. Parents were given the literature published on the ASPS and ACPA web sites to review and were asked to complete a 5-question test specifically targeted to the content of the passage they reviewed. We tested the readability of the 2 online passages using Readability Studio software (Oleander Software Solutions Ltd). Sixty parents completed the study. Across all groups, the mean score was 4.35 of a possible 5. The mean score was 4.4 for the ASPS web site and 4.29 for the ACPA web site. Fifty-three percent of participants answered all questions correctly. No significant difference in scores was noted between web sites (P = .48). Despite containing content of varying reading-level difficulty, the literature posted on the ACPA and ASPS web sites concerning cleft lip and palate conveyed information equally well to the target parent demographic with high levels of comprehension.

A Scale to Assess Activities of Daily Living in Pantothenate Kinase-Associated Neurodegeneration.

ABSTRACTObjectivePantothenate kinase‐associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) is an autosomal‐recessive, neurodegenerative disorder with a mixed‐motor phenotype caused by a defective PanK2 enzyme, for which there are few adequate treatment options. Clinimetrically sound measures of patient‐reported outcomes are necessary to facilitate therapeutic development for this debilitating disease. This study's objective was to develop such a scale and assess its clinimetric properties.MethodsA conceptually driven, iterative, content development process incorporating input from experts, caregivers, and patients was used. Scale items were initially adapted from the Unified Parkinson's Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) Part II resulting in the 12‐item Pantothenate Kinase‐Associated Neurodegeneration Activities of Daily Living (PKAN‐ADL). The PKAN‐ADL scale was administered to caregivers (n = 37) and patients (n = 2) twice over 2 weeks, along with selected Quality of Life in Neurological Disorders (Neuro‐QoL) measures, selected attributes of the Health Utilities Index (HUI)‐2/3, and the Stroke Aphasia Depression Questionnaire (SADQ‐10) to assess construct validity.ResultsInternal consistency was 0.93, with excellent test‐retest reliability (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.99). Of the 12 items, 25% (n = 3) showed a ceiling effect >30% (range, 31–54) and 42% (n = 5) showed a floor effect >30% (range, 31–46), reflecting disease heterogeneity. Convergent validity was shown with Neuro‐QoL measures (rs > 0.90) and HUI‐2/3 attributes (rs ≥ 0.48); divergent validity was demonstrated with the SADQ‐10 (r = 0.11). Participants reported a high level of comprehension (98%), and average item relevance ratings (0–10 scale) ranged from 7.0 to 9.9.ConclusionThe PKAN‐ADL scale demonstrated acceptable content validity, with evidence of construct validity and excellent reliability. Overall results support the use of the PKAN‐ADL scale in clinical trials.

Sometimes more is better: Agent gestures, procedural knowledge and the foreign language learner

AbstractPedagogical agents in multimedia learning environments have frequently been designed to produce pointing gestures (deictic) to direct spatial awareness. Although this might be beneficial for native English‐speaking students who possess high levels of comprehension, only using pointing gestures with foreign language students learning English is problematic because these students need more assistance with language comprehension than just directing spatial awareness. The purpose of this study was to explore how gesture type and gesture frequency help foreign language students perceive the agent’s persona and the ability to recall procedural information. The results found one significant interaction between average gestures and no gesture in terms of facilitation, but all other conditions and persona subscales were not significant. For learning outcomes, the enhanced gesture condition significantly recalled more information than the no gesture condition (p = 0.017), and was approaching significance with the conversational gesture condition (p = 0.059). The findings suggest that when the learning population consists of foreign language students, pedagogical agents should use representational and beat gestures to help students comprehend more of the language, and the gesture frequency needs to be increased to account for the lack of verbal listening skills with this population.

Users' Interpretation of Pictograms and Pictures for Conveying Instructions and Warnings on Pharmaceutical Labels.

Pharmaceutical pictograms are figures that provide a visual representation of medication instructions and warnings. Pictograms were created in order to lower the continuously rising problem of poor medication adherence due to patients misunderstanding what is being instructed on medication labels. Research on pictograms show that their use could increase patients' comprehension of medication instructions, but the comprehension rates are still low. Researchers have argued that in order to improve the effectiveness of pictograms, they must be more concrete, simple, meaningful, and familiar. Pictures have these properties. Thus, the goal of this study was to examine if the use of pictures (i.e., real images) provide a better representation of what is being instructed to users on medication labels than pictograms. We hypothesized that real images would lead to a better understanding of the instructions and warnings for taking medication, and in turn, users would have higher comprehension levels. Participants completed an online survey evaluating the meaning of either pictograms or pictures. Both quantitative and qualitative data analyses were conducted on free responses to the questions and on users' ratings of the "goodness" of the stimuli. The results showed that participants were moderately accurate (74%) in their interpretation of pictograms, and the use of pictures did not improve their comprehension.

The Contributions of Informal Home Literacy Activities to Specific Higher-Level Comprehension Processes.

This study shows that home literacy activities contribute to kindergarten children’s higher-level comprehension processes, namely knowledge integration and knowledge access. Kindergarten children completed measures assessing literacy and language skills and then their performances on these measures were correlated with home literacy activities, which were assessed via a parental questionnaire. Consistent with previous research, the results revealed that informal home literacy activities were positively related to language comprehension and vocabulary but not to letter-word decoding and phonemic decoding skills. The results also revealed that home literacy activities were positively related to knowledge integration and knowledge access, two strong predictors of language and reading comprehension. Finally, the present results suggest that the contributions that home literacy activities make to language comprehension are the same contributions that home literacy activities make to higher-level comprehension processes. In other words, the contributions that home literacy activities make to language comprehension are not independent of the contributions that home literacy activities make to higher-level comprehension processes.

Мозговые электрические показатели локализации новых слов

There is currently an increasing interest in the acquisition of reading fluency. This is characterized as automated reading with higher rates of speed and accuracy that enables the reader to carry out processes of higher-level comprehension. A key factor in reading fluency is the establishment of word representations in the reader’s lexicon, which allow the direct visual recognition of words. It is widely accepted that a repeated visual exposure to novel words is needed to construct these mental representations. However, the nature of memory traces reached after this training is a question hotly debated in behavioral literature. While some authors argue that a simple visual training enables the formation of lexical traces for novel words, others argue that a training not only in orthographic but also in other word features (such as phonology or meaning) is required for the acquisition of high quality lexical representations. The use of more suitable measures for exploring the brain response during this process could contribute to solve this question. In this sense, the ERP approach emerges as a powerful tool to study the neurophysiological mechanisms underlying the acquisition of the lexical reading, and particularly the training conditions under which the formation of high quality lexical representations is possible. In this paper, the main contributions from the ERP literature to the understanding of the novel word lexicalization are reviewed.

Bilingual children’s story comprehension across language boundaries: does retelling improve comprehension?

ABSTRACT The main objective of this study was to investigate 9–10-year-old children’s comprehension processes during listening to and free recall of a story. A cross-linguistic design comprised texts in L1 German and recall in L2 English and vice versa. Corresponding mono-linguistic control conditions in either L1 or L2 allowed to examine the extent to which higher-level comprehension processes led to the same performance of story recall, construction of a coherent text representation and inference making across language boundaries. The findings revealed that comprehension predominantly occurred during the input phase. Better comprehension resulted when L1 input was provided as opposed to L2 input. Retelling the story in L1 added less to comprehension when the input was in L2. The findings supported the prediction derived from the capacity hypothesis that bilingual children’s comprehension benefits from resources set free by more automatic processing during listening to a story in L1. A comparable automaticity effect was not observed during retelling in L1. L1-dominant bilinguals’ comprehension reacted sensitively to bilingual language conditions in contrast to balanced bilinguals’ performance.

A latent variable analysis of the contribution of executive function to adult readers’ comprehension of science text: the roles of vocabulary ability and level of comprehension

Emerging evidence suggests that executive function plays an important role in adult readers’ understanding of text. This study examined the contribution of executive function to comprehension of expository science text among adult readers, as well as the role of vocabulary ability in the relation between executive function and text comprehension. The roles of additional reader characteristics, including age, reading time, prior knowledge, and vocabulary ability, in comprehension were also examined. Using structural equation modeling, a latent executive function factor significantly predicted comprehension after accounting for age, reading time, prior knowledge, and vocabulary ability. Vocabulary ability mediated the relation between executive function and both lower-level and higher-level reading comprehension. Executive function contributed more strongly to lower-level compared with higher-level comprehension of the text. Implications for future research are discussed.

Quality Talk: Developing Students’ Discourse to Promote High-level Comprehension

Students often struggle to comprehend complex text. In response, we conducted an initial, year-long study of Quality Talk, a teacher-facilitated, small-group discussion approach designed to enhance students’ basic and high-level comprehension, in two fourth-grade classrooms. Specifically, teachers delivered instructional mini-lessons on discourse elements (e.g., questioning or argumentation) and conducted weekly text-based discussions in their language arts classes. Analysis of the videorecorded discussions showed decreases in teacher-initiated discourse elements, indicating a release of responsibility to students, whereas students’ discourse reflected increased critical-analytic thinking (e.g., elaborated explanations or exploratory talk). Importantly, statistically and practically significant increases were evidenced on written measures of students’ basic and high-level comprehension, indicating the promise of small-group discourse as a way to foster individual student learning outcomes.

ПЕРСПЕКТИВИ ТА МОЖЛИВОСТІ ТРАНСДИСЦИПЛІНАРНОГО ПІДХОДУ В ПРАВІ

The article is devoted to the analysis of the prospects and possibilities of using the transdisciplinary approach in modern law. It is proved that at the heart of the modern crisis, including law, is the crisis of the person himself, the overcoming of which can become a way out of a difficult situation in all spheres of life and activities of the society. This requires a new understanding of the man himself as an inalienable element from the whole world, as well as a rethinking of the meaning of universal and civilizational values as meta-legal. It is shown that such opportunities open up from the standpoint of transdisciplinarity as a new way of developing scientific knowledge, for the first time overcoming the subject-object discontinuity, a traditional feature of European rationality, and rises to a higher level of comprehension of any problem formed by a person and/or threatening him. The work highlights the first attempts in jurisprudence through the human "dimension" to reach a higher level of understanding of the problems of law through its combination with psychology and sociology, which exceeded narrow disciplinary boundaries, formed a common humanitarian field, and gave research signs of transdisciplinarity. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of those legal problems that today can be solved using a transdisciplinary approach, in particular, the problems of the relationship between legal positivism and natural law, the infinity of normative and legal deviations in the regulation of public relations in the state, international legal formations and their legitimation. The conclusion is made that since all the indicated problems of modern law are valuable, their solution requires going beyond the "pure" jurisprudence by means of a transdisciplinary synthesis of social sciences and humanities, requiring lawyers to acquire new theoretical and practical knowledge and skills.

The Effects of Choice on Reading Engagement and Comprehension for Second- and Third-Grade Students: An Action Research Report

Poor literacy rates contribute to low school performance for children across America. In particular, low-income schools continue to struggle with declining literacy rates. Issues with literacy are often attributed to lack of reading comprehension. This study tested the effects of choice on reading comprehension in second- and third-grade students at a high-income school and a low-income school. Students were observed while reading silently and aloud to see if either method affected reading comprehension. Data were collected from 32 students before, during, and after reading to determine whether students’ comprehension levels were higher when given opportunities to choose their own books or when they read assigned books. Trials were performed while students read silently and then aloud. Results indicated that students had higher comprehension levels both when they could choose their own books and when they read silently.

Exploring the influence of homogeneous versus heterogeneous grouping on students’ text-based discussions and comprehension

Small-group, text-based discussions are a prominent and effective instructional practice, but the literature on the effects of different group composition methods (i.e., homogeneous vs. heterogeneous ability grouping) has been inconclusive with few direct comparisons of the two grouping methods. A yearlong classroom-based intervention was conducted to examine the ways in which group composition influenced students’ discourse and comprehension. Fourth- and fifth-grade students (N=62) were randomly assigned to either a homogeneous or heterogeneous ability small-group discussion. All students engaged in Quality Talk, a theoretically- and empirically-supported intervention using small-group discussion to promote high-level comprehension. Multilevel modeling revealed that, on average, students displayed positive, statistically and practically significant gains in both basic and high-level comprehension performance over the course of Quality Talk. Further, our findings indicated heterogeneous ability grouping was more beneficial than homogeneous ability grouping for high-level comprehension, on average, with low-ability students struggling more in homogeneous grouping. With respect to student discourse, additional quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed group composition differences in terms of the frequency, duration, and quality of student questions and responses, as well as the types of discourse low-ability students enacted in homogeneous groups. This study expands upon the extant literature and informs future research and practice on group composition methods.

Applicability of the Compensatory Encoding Model in Foreign Language Reading: An Investigation with Chinese College English Language Learners

While some first language (L1) reading models suggest that inefficient word recognition and small working memory tend to inhibit higher-level comprehension processes; the Compensatory Encoding Model maintains that slow word recognition and small working memory do not normally hinder reading comprehension, as readers are able to operate metacognitive strategies to compensate for inefficient word recognition and working memory limitation as long as readers process a reading task without time constraint. Although empirical evidence is accumulated for support of the Compensatory Encoding Model in L1 reading, there is lack of research for testing of the Compensatory Encoding Model in foreign language (FL) reading. This research empirically tested the Compensatory Encoding Model in English reading among Chinese college English language learners (ELLs). Two studies were conducted. Study one focused on testing whether reading condition varying time affects the relationship between word recognition, working memory, and reading comprehension. Students were tested on a computerized English word recognition test, a computerized Operation Span task, and reading comprehension in time constraint and non-time constraint reading. The correlation and regression analyses showed that the strength of association was much stronger between word recognition, working memory, and reading comprehension in time constraint than that in non-time constraint reading condition. Study two examined whether FL readers were able to operate metacognitive reading strategies as a compensatory way of reading comprehension for inefficient word recognition and working memory limitation in non-time constraint reading. The participants were tested on the same computerized English word recognition test and Operation Span test. They were required to think aloud while reading and to complete the comprehension questions. The think-aloud protocols were coded for concurrent use of reading strategies, classified into language-oriented strategies, content-oriented strategies, re-reading, pausing, and meta-comment. The correlation analyses showed that while word recognition and working memory were only significantly related to frequency of language-oriented strategies, re-reading, and pausing, but not with reading comprehension. Jointly viewed, the results of the two studies, complimenting each other, supported the applicability of the Compensatory Encoding Model in FL reading with Chinese college ELLs.

Assessment of Students’ Higher-level Text Comprehension Skills in Basic School

Text comprehension is a sophisticated process that is influenced by the reader’s cognitive skills, prior knowledge and the type of texts. The aim of the present longitudinal study was to assess the students’ ability to analyse and evaluate the narrative text in Grades 4 and 5. A total of 831 Estonian students were tested in two consecutive years. The results indicated that fewer than half of the students succeeded in analysing and evaluating the contents of the text, while the students’ text comprehension skills in Grade 5 were significantly better than in Grade 4. Students had more difficulties answering the questions that examined their skill of evaluating the text, compared to their ability to analyse the text. This led to the conclusion that teachers should pay more attention to the students’ higher-level cognitive processes and support their text comprehension skills. Keywords: Analysis and evaluation skills; Basic school; Reading; Text comprehension