The Construction Of Mental Representations During Reading

This volume presents in-depth investigations of the processes of meaning-making during reading at both local (discourse) and global (general knowledge) levels. It considerably extends our knowledge of how mental representations are constructed and updated during reading. The book also provides insight into the process of representation construction by using online measures and relating this process with final memory representations; provides detailed models of these processes; pays attention to the coordination of multiple representations constructed; focuses on the monitoring and updating of mental representations; and applies all this knowledge to richer and more complicated texts than are often used in laboratories.

This volume presents in-depth investigations of the processes of meaning-making during reading at both local (discourse) and global (general knowledge) levels. It will be of theoretical and practical interest to cognitive scientists & reading researchers

Publisher Description

Researchers of reading comprehension, literacy, educational psychology, psychology, and neuroscience are brought together for this handbook, to document and summarize the current body of research on theory, methods, instruction and assessment in reading comprehension.

Author Representations in Literary Reading investigates the role of the author in the mind of the reader. It is the first book-length empirical study on generated author inferences by readers of literature. It bridges the gap between theories which hold that the author is irrelevant and those that give him prominence. By combining insights and methods from both cognitive psychology and literary theory, this book contributes to a better understanding of how readers process literary texts and what role their assumptions about an author play. A series of experiments demonstrate that readers generate author inferences during the process of reading, which they use to create an image of the text’s author. The findings suggest that interpretations about the author play a pivotal role in the literary reading process. This book is relevant to scholars and students in all areas of the cognitive sciences, including literary studies and psychology.

Provides an overview of state-of-the-art research on the science of reading, revised and updated throughout The Science of Reading presents the most recent advances in the study of reading and related skills. Bringing together contributions from a multidisciplinary team of experts, this comprehensive volume reviews theoretical approaches, stage models of reading, cross-linguistic studies of reading, reading instruction, the neurobiology of reading, and more. Divided into six parts, the book explores word recognition processes in skilled reading, learning to read and spell, reading comprehension and its development, reading and writing in different languages, developmental and acquired reading disorders, and the social, biological, and environmental factors of literacy. The second edition of The Science of Reading is extensively revised to reflect contemporary theoretical insights and methodological advances. Two entirely new chapters on co-occurrence and complexity are accompanied by reviews of recent findings and discussion of future trends and research directions. Updated chapters cover the development of reading and language in preschools, the social correlates of reading, experimental research on sentence processing, learning to read in alphabetic orthographies, comorbidities that occur frequently with dyslexia, and other central topics. Demonstrates how different knowledge sources underpin reading processes using a wide range of methodologies Presents critical appraisals of theoretical and computational models of word recognition and evidence-based research on reading intervention Reviews evidence on skilled visual word recognition, the role of phonology, methods for identifying dyslexia, and the molecular genetics of reading and language Highlights the importance of language as a foundation for literacy and as a risk factor for developmental dyslexia and other reading disorders Discusses learning to read in different types of writing systems, with a language impairment, and in variations of the home literacy environment Describes the role of contemporary analytical tools such as dominance analysis and quantile regression in modelling the development of reading and comprehension Part of the acclaimed Wiley Blackwell Handbooks of Developmental Psychology series, the second edition of The Science of Reading: A Handbook remains an invaluable resource for advanced students, researchers, and specialist educators looking for an up-to-date overview of the field.

How often do we hear that Americans are so ignorant about politics that their civic competence is impaired, and that the media are to blame because they do a dismal job of informing the public? Processing Politics shows that average Americans are far smarter than the critics believe. Integrating a broad range of current research on how people learn (from political science, social psychology, communication, physiology, and artificial intelligence), Doris Graber shows that televised presentations—at their best—actually excel at transmitting information and facilitating learning. She critiques current political offerings in terms of their compatibility with our learning capacities and interests, and she considers the obstacles, both economic and political, that affect the content we receive on the air, on cable, or on the Internet. More and more people rely on information from television and the Internet to make important decisions. Processing Politics offers a sound, well-researched defense of these remarkably versatile media, and challenges us to make them work for us in our democracy.

This volume provides an excellent overview of the field of discourse processes, capturing both its breadth and its depth. World-renowned researchers present the latest theoretical developments and thought-provoking empirical data. In doing so, they cover a broad range of communicative activities, including text comprehension, conversational communication, argumentation, television or media viewing, and more. A central theme across all chapters concerns the notion that coherence determines the interpretation of the communication. The various chapters illustrate the many forms that coherence can take, and explore its role in different communicative settings.