No abstract

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.

Younger and older adults participated in 9 hr of either structure strategy training, interest strategy training, or no training. Both trained groups reported positive changes in reading, but only the structure strategy group showed increased total recall from a variety of texts and an informative video. Structure strategy training increased the amount of information remembered as well as recall of the most important information. This training affected the organization of recall and was critical for producing readers who could use the structure strategy consistently across a variety of expository texts. In addition, it helped learners use signals in text more effectively. There was an additive effect of training plus signaling for use of the structure strategy consistently across five passages. The strategy switch hypothesis was supported, indicating that signaling affects encoding rather than retrieval processes. The findings have implications for both reading and writing.Both young and old adults need good reading comprehension skills to maintain functional competence, independence, and quality of life. At the top of the list of strategies identified by Pressley and McCormick (1995) as promoting comprehension and memory of text is using and analyzing text structure to abstract the main ideas. They explained that knowledge of the structure of text helps readers to separate the "wheat from the chaff as they read.Readers who use such a strategy (the structure strategy; Meyer, 1985a;Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980) approach reading with the strategic knowledge that authors structure text in predictable ways, and that they can construct an integrated representation of the text by following the hierarchical organization of the text and the relative importance of its conceptual content. The present study addresses mechanisms of the structure strategy on recall of younger and older adults.Hierarchical text structure refers to the elements of text that provide coherence by emphasizing ideas central to the author's main thesis and deemphasizing peripheral ideas (Meyer & Rice, 1984). When reading a text, a reader builds a mental representation

No abstract

This study investigated the effects of different versions of Web‐based instruction focused on text structure on fifth‐ and seventh‐grade students' reading comprehension. Stratified random assignment was employed in a two‐factor experiment embedded within a pretest and multiple posttests design (immediate and four‐month delayed posttests). The two factors were type of feedback provided by the Web‐based tutor (elaborated vs. simple feedback) and the motivational factor of choice of text topics in practice lessons (student choice of texts vs. no choice). These factors were examined to learn how they affected performance after the six‐month, 90‐minutes/week intervention. Students who received elaborated feedback performed better on a standardized test of reading comprehension than students who received simple feedback. Learning how to attend to errors from the elaborated feedback tutor yielded large gains in test performance. Simple feedback did not help the least skilled third of readers move from complete lack of competency to competency using the structure strategy with problem‐and‐solution text. Choice between two topics for practice lessons did not increase reading comprehension. Substantial effects sizes were found from pretest to posttest on various measures of reading comprehension: recall, strategy competence, and standardized reading comprehension test scores. Maintenance of performance over summer break was found for most measures. The study informs research and teaching about Web‐based reading tutors, feedback, comprehension, and top‐level text structure. [Note: Bonnie Meyer discusses the research presented in this article in a podcast at the “Voice of Literacy”: http://www.voiceofliteracy.org/posts/36682.] لقد فحصت هذه الدراسة تأثيرات أنواع مختلفة من التعليم المبني على الشبكة العالمية المركز على تركيب النص الذي يناسب طلاب الصفوف الخامسة إلى السابعة في استيعاب القراءة. ويتم توظيف واجباً عشوائياً مختلف المراحل في فحص ذات العنصرين يشمل تصميمه اختبار قبلي وعدة اختبارات بعدية (مباشرة وبعد مدة أربعة أشهر). وكان العنصر من العنصرين نوعاً من التغذية الراجعة المتوفرة من المدرس الخصوصي الموجود على الشبكة العالمية (التغذية الراجعة المفصلة مقابل المبسطة) وعنصر اختيار مواضيع النصوص الحافز في الدروس الممارسة (اختيار النصوص على يد الطالب مقابل عدم وجود الاختيار). وقد تم فحص هاذين العنصرين للفهم كيف أثرا في الأداء بعد التدخل الذي مضى 90 دقيقة في الأسبوع لمدة ستة أشهر. وقد أدى الطلاب الذين استلموا التغذية الراجعة تأدية أفضل في امتحان قرائي معياري من الطلاب الذين استلموا التغذية المبسطة. إن التعلم كيف يتم متناول الأخطاء من التغذية الراجعة المفصلة لدى المدرس الخصوصي أنتج تقدمات كبيرة في الأداء على الامتحان. وقد لم تساعد التغذية الراجعة القارئ ذا المهارة الأكثر انخفاضاً للانتقال من عدم وجود الكفاءة نهائياً إلى الكفاءة في استخدام الإستراتيجية التركيبية بالنسبة لمشاكل النص وحلها. ولكن لم يحسن الاختيار بين الموضوعين في الدروس الممارسة الاستيعاب القرائي. وقد تم إيجاد تأثيرات في بالغة الأحجام من الاختبار القبلي إلى البعدي من حيث مقاييس استيعاب القراءة المتنوعة: الاسترجاع والكفاءة الأستراتيجية والعلامات من اختبارات استيعا...