Reading Short Texts Research Articles

Text-based information design for in-vehicle displays: A systematic review

Reading short texts at a brief glance behaviour has been increasing, especially in the in-vehicle interface of the multitask context of driving. This behaviour led to a change in the approach of preparing and designing in-car information. Consequently, understanding the current status of existing design principles is necessary for designers to find the appropriate solution for text presentation on the in-vehicle display under driving conditions. Thus, the present study conducts a systematic review of text-based information design for in-vehicle displays. A total of 1,495 studies (1980–2022) were screened, and 360 emerged for full-text review; 27 studies met the inclusion criteria, including journal articles concerning the design of text-based information for in-vehicle displays involving text design and the effect on safe driving or reducing workload and distraction. The results were summarised in three themes of literature: existing design guidelines, design factors, and evaluation methodology. The existing guidelines and recommendations focus on the physical presence of text (modality, location, colour, typeface, font size), with few recommendations on the linguistic presence of the text (message style and message length). The discussion and future work section enables further work on developing usable and safe informational text displays on the in-vehicle interface and other short glance reading engagements.

How Relevant Is the Sentence Unit to Accessing Implicit Meaning?

This paper examines the relevance of the sentence concept to the understanding of three types of implicitness (presupposition, conversational implicatures, irony). Our experimental protocol involved 105 children (aged 6 to 11) and 82 adults who were asked to read short texts composed of a context about some characters and a target sentence conveying one of the three implicit contents. After reading, children and adults had to answer a comprehension yes-no question and indicate the segments from the text that helped them answer the question. Results showed a difference between the three types of implicitness, with presupposition being detected and understood at a subsentential level, whereas implicatures and irony come under extrasentential level requiring the context to be taken into account. Referring to sentence as a unit of meaning does not seem relevant as soon as understanding is not limited to the literal meaning of what is written, but also concerns what is meant by the text.

Levels of Students‘ Media Culture (Survey)

This paper presents a survey among students aimed at identifying levels of media and digital citizenship when working in an online environment. The task of the study is to examine which types of behaviour are typical for students when working with media texts in terms of the degree of sensitivity to media texts, the degree of reflection on civic issues, the degree of reflection on the distribution and content of media texts. 101 students from metropolitan schools participated. The questionnaire consisted of 47 statements, using a 5-module scale for assessing agreement in the following groups: ‘Civic culture and attitude to civic participation’, ‘Preference to reading and problem solving’, ‘Working with media texts in Bulgarian language classes’, ‘Self-assessment when working with media texts’, ‘Attitude to media’. The results show: students’ lack of interest in political issues; preference to read short texts; lack of confidence in distinguishing credible from non-credible information.

Voice quality and its effects on university students' listening effort in a virtual seminar room

A teacher’s poor voice quality may increase listening effort in pupils, but it is unclear whether this effect persists in adult listeners. Thus, the goal of this study is to examine the impact of vocal hoarseness on university students' listening effort in a virtual seminar room. An audio-visual immersive virtual reality environment is utilized to simulate a typical seminar room with common background sounds and fellow students represented as wooden mannequins. Participants wear a head-mounted display and are equipped with two controllers to engage in a dual-task paradigm. The primary task is to listen to a virtual professor reading short texts and retain relevant content information to be recalled later. The texts are presented either in a normal or an imitated hoarse voice. In parallel, participants perform a secondary task which is responding to tactile vibration patterns via the controllers. It is hypothesized that listening to the hoarse voice induces listening effort, resulting in more cognitive resources needed for primary task performance while secondary task performance is hindered. Results are presented and discussed in light of students’ cognitive performance and listening challenges in higher education learning environments.

STRATEGI PENGEMBANGAN SKILL BERBAHASA INGGRIS PADA MAHASISWA PRODI PENDIDIKAN BAHASA INGGRIS

In general, the purpose of this study is to find out how the responses of English Education study program students to strategies to improve english language skills. This study collects data through library research, which is the collection of written sources derived from articles that are relevant to the topic discussed. Reading short texts in english repeatedly, listening to various things such as music, radio, and news in english, writing personal notes, interacting and communicating verbally with others in english, note-taking skills, watching movies and YouTube with english subtitles, writing argumentation essays, and presentation assignments, are all discussed in this study as strategies for developing english language skills of English Education study program students. The strategies and their implementation are expected to help students improve their english language skills and abilities to meet the students' own expectations, which is the conclusion of this study.

No Correlation Between Articulation Speed and Silent Reading Rate when Adults Read Short Texts.

Silent reading often involves phonological encoding of the text in addition to orthographic processing. The nature of the phonological code is debated, however: Is it an abstract code or does it contain information about the pronunciation of the visual stimulus? To answer this question, we investigated the relationship between articulation speed and reading speed, both for silent reading and reading aloud. We investigated whether people with fast articulation speed read faster than people with slow articulation speed. We recruited 94 participants, who in a Zoom session were asked to read short texts silently or aloud. They were also asked to talk about their lives and say the numbers 1-10 or the months of the year as quickly as possible. Finally, they completed an online vocabulary test and an author recognition test. Multiple regression analysis and cluster analysis showed that although the speed of reading aloud and silent reading correlated to some extent, they belonged to two different clusters. Reading aloud was mainly related to talking fluency and articulation speed, while silent reading was more related to vocabulary and knowledge about fiction authors. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the phonological code in silent reading typically does not contain articulatory information, although our data do not rule out the possibility that this may be the case for a small percentage of people or when people read more difficult texts.

The effects of text direction of different text lengths on Chinese reading

This study investigates the effects of text direction (horizontal and vertical) and length (long and short) on Chinese reading performance. The experiment enrolled 68 university students aged 19–29 years who were asked to read articles. We recorded reading times and measured recall after reading using a memory test and measured task load using the NASA-TLX scale. The results show that horizontal text was read faster than vertical text. When reading long texts, horizontal reading has a better memory effect than vertical reading. When reading short texts, the effect of text direction on memory was not significant. Moreover, the mental, physical, and temporal demands of horizontal text were lower than those of vertical text. These findings contribute to a better understanding of the impact of text direction, provide valuable suggestions for Chinese typography, and help readers obtain better reading outcomes.

Analysis of Early Reading Ability in Grade II Elementary School Students

The purpose of this research is to describe the analysis of an earlier reading ability at second grade of elementary school students as well as factors that affect students' earlier reading ability. Researchers use a qualitative approach with a case study type of research. The data sources in this study were grade 2 teachers and parents of grade 2 SD Negeri 045 /I Sridadi. The data collection techniques used in this study were observation, interviews, and document studies. The data obtained is then analyzed through the stages consisting of data reduction, data presentation, and verification / drawing conclusions. The results showed that out of 16 second grade students of SD Negeri 045/1 Sridadi, it was found that 6 students, namely JA, AC, MR, AI, DA, and MN experienced problems in the realm of an earlier reading ability such as : (a) not being able to recognize letters, (b) reading syllables, (c) spelling words, (d) stringing words into simple sentences, and (e) reading short texts. Those aspects are the benchmark for students to have an earlier reading ability. Then students' difficulty in reading is caused by several factors, namely: (a) lack of interest in learning, (b) lack of self-confidence, (c) preschool education, and (d) attention from parents.

Effects of different interaction modes on fatigue and reading effectiveness with mobile phones

Reading on touchscreen mobile devices is common in modern society. However, it is difficult to determine which interaction mode has the best reading effect when reading texts of different lengths. Using memory tests, eye-movement data analysis, and task load scale, we studied the effects of paging and vertical scrolling modes on the memory level, visual fatigue, task load, and reading speed of 28 participants reading both long and short texts. The results showed that vertical scrolling has a better memory effect than paging mode when reading short texts, but there was no difference in effect when reading long texts; the blink frequency in paging mode is higher than in scrolling mode whether reading long or short texts; no significant differences were found in reading speed in scrolling or paging mode when reading short or long texts; and in task load, the mental and temporal demands in scrolling mode were lower than in paging mode whether reading long or short texts. Considering that most current mobile readings do not differ in interaction mode according to the length of reading material, our conclusions provide valuable design recommendations to designers working on mobile reading apps.

The Effect of Using Eye Tracking and Thinking: A loud technique to assist foreign language learners to recognize and understand the meaning of English words in reading texts

The current study combined traditional superiority and equivalence tests to investigate the effect of using eye tracking and thinking, a loud technique for helping learners recognize and understand the meaning of English words in reading texts. This study used equivalent tests, which are supposed to be more suitable for engaging unreactive learners. High levels of English learners were selected to read short texts enclosing pseudo-words. The participants were divided into three groups: two experimental groups (i.e., eye tracking and thinking aloud), and one control group. The findings revealed that neither of the two experimental groups showed a strong performance when recognizing and understanding the meaning of English words. However, thinking aloud had a somewhat better impact in contrast to eye tracking.

Massive Online Open Courses and Language Learning: The Case for a Beginners’ English Course

Massive Online Open Courses have recently burst onto the scene in Spain and may well prove to be a good way to teach and learn foreign languages. The course analysed in this presentation was part of the first large-scale experience with MOOCs as a tool for English language learning in Spain. This course was designed so that absolute beginners could quickly learn the meanings of the thousand most frequent English words and start to read short texts. A comprehensive questionnaire was given to participants to gather qualitative and quantitative information related to their background and previous learning experiences, as well as methodological aspects related to their experience of massive online open learning. Methodological issues in this new language teaching/learning resource explored in this presentation are: crowdsourcing, explicit learning, distance teaching/learning, learner autonomy, materials design, and the development of learning strategies.

Changes in breathing while listening to read speech: the effect of reader and speech mode.

The current paper extends previous work on breathing during speech perception and provides supplementary material regarding the hypothesis that adaptation of breathing during perception “could be a basis for understanding and imitating actions performed by other people” (Paccalin and Jeannerod, 2000). The experiments were designed to test how the differences in reader breathing due to speaker-specific characteristics, or differences induced by changes in loudness level or speech rate influence the listener breathing. Two readers (a male and a female) were pre-recorded while reading short texts with normal and then loud speech (both readers) or slow speech (female only). These recordings were then played back to 48 female listeners. The movements of the rib cage and abdomen were analyzed for both the readers and the listeners. Breathing profiles were characterized by the movement expansion due to inhalation and the duration of the breathing cycle. We found that both loudness and speech rate affected each reader’s breathing in different ways. Listener breathing was different when listening to the male or the female reader and to the different speech modes. However, differences in listener breathing were not systematically in the same direction as reader differences. The breathing of listeners was strongly sensitive to the order of presentation of speech mode and displayed some adaptation in the time course of the experiment in some conditions. In contrast to specific alignments of breathing previously observed in face-to-face dialog, no clear evidence for a listener–reader alignment in breathing was found in this purely auditory speech perception task. The results and methods are relevant to the question of the involvement of physiological adaptations in speech perception and to the basic mechanisms of listener–speaker coupling.

Aging and Interference in Story Recall

Background/Study Context: According to inhibitory deficit theory, older adults should be more impaired by visual distractors than younger adults when reading texts. Studies using a multiple-choice recognition test to examine age differences in the impairment of text comprehension due to distractor words yielded inconsistent results. Methods: In the present study, younger participants and older participants were required to read short texts comprising unrelated, related, or no distractor words. Visual acuity was equated between groups. Text recall was assessed using a gist-based propositional scoring procedure. Results: There were pronounced age differences in reading with distraction. Older adults were slowed down more than younger adults by the presence of distractor words when reading. Furthermore, older adults’ story recall was clearly impaired by the presence of distractor material, whereas younger adults’ recall performance was not. In addition, older adults were more likely to make intrusion errors. Conclusion: Consistent with inhibitory deficit theory, the findings suggest that older adults were less able than younger adults to establish a correct mental representation of the target text when distractors were present. Furthermore, older adults were more likely than younger adults to build up incorrect memory representations that comprise distractor concepts. Thus, there are pronounced age differences in the impairment of text comprehension by distracting information.

The effects of different approaches to reading instruction on letter detection tasks in normally achieving and low achieving readers

The present study used two letter detection tasks, the classic missing letter effect paradigm and a single word versus familiar word compound version of this paradigm, to study bottom-up and top–down processes involved in reading in normally achieving as compared to low achieving elementary school readers. The research participants were children in grades first to sixth who had been taught to read by three approaches to reading instruction (ARI): the whole language/global approach, the phonic/synthetic approach or the eclectic approach. Thus, the study attempted to clarify how different ARIs activate these processes in these two types of readers. The main hypothesis was that since low achieving readers rely on top–down processes for word recognition (see, e.g., Stanovich, 1980), the whole language ARI will reduce the difference in bottom-up tasks between them and the normally achieving readers. In the two experiments included in the study, participants were required to perform a letter detection task while reading short texts in Hebrew for comprehension. Contrary to this study hypotheses, the main finding was that the whole language ARI does not compensate for difficulties in bottom-up processes of low achieving readers. Moreover, the results of this study imply that any improvement in basic processes involved in reading proficiency produced by the whole language ARI for both the normal and the low achieving readers dissipates by grade three.

The role of connectives in science text comprehension and memory

We contrasted four possible views of how causal connectives function during reading short texts: and end-of-clause reactivation view, a connective-elicited inference view, a resource-saving view, and a no-connective stimulating view. In Experiment 1, participants read a series of popular scientific texts joined by because or separated by a full stop. The on-line word-completion task used to measure inference activation revealed that although causal inferences are activated during reading, they are not enhanced by the presence of a connective. In Experiment 2, second-clause reading times data and memory data (prompted delayed recall test) revealed specific patterns of results according to the nature of the relation conveyed by the connective (additive vs. causal). We found evidence that only because gave rise to an immediate presence effect associated with faster end-of clause reading times. This supported the view that because enhanced the on-line integration process rather than the inferential process.

Perceptual components of situation models.

These experiments examined the hypothesis that situation model construction involves perceptual processing--specifically, processing that involves visuospatial information. In this research, a dual-task paradigm was used to demonstrate that tasks that engage visuospatial processes interfere more with the generation of a situation model than tasks that are less likely to involve these processes or tasks that are verbal in nature. Using Albrecht and O'Brien's (1993) contradiction effect as evidence of situation model construction, Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants reading short texts while simultaneously holding high-imagery sentences in memory failed to show a significant contradiction effect in comparison with readers holding low-imagery sentences in memory. In Experiment 2, participants reading texts while retaining a difficult visuospatial memory load showed disrupted comprehension in comparison with readers retaining a verbal memory load.