People who show good performance in dynamic complex problem-solving tasks can also make errors. Theories of human error fail to fully explain when and why good performers err. Some theories would predict that these errors are to some extent the consequence of the difficulties that people have in adapting to new and unexpected environmental conditions. However, such theories cannot explain why some new conditions lead to error, while others do not. There are also some theories that defend the notion that good performers are more cognitively flexible and better able to adapt to new environmental conditions. However, the fact is that they sometimes make errors when they face those new conditions. This paper describes one experiment and a research methodology designed to test the hypothesis that when people use a problem-solving strategy, their performance is only affected by those conditions which are relevant to that particular strategy. This hypothesis is derived from theories that explain human performance based on the interaction between cognitive mechanisms and environment.

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Background: The use of "easy-to-read" materials for people with intellectual disabilities has become very widespread but their effectiveness has scarcely been evaluated. In this study, the framework provided by Kintsch's Construction-Integration Model (1988) is used to examine (a) the reading comprehension levels of different passages of Spanish text that have been designed following easy-to-read guidelines (b) the relationships between reading comprehension (literal and inferential) and various linguistic features of these texts.Method: Sixteen students with mild intellectual disability (ID) and low levels of reading skills were asked to read easy-to-read texts and then complete a reading comprehension test. The corpus of texts was composed of a set of forty-eight pieces of news selected from www.noticiasfacil.es, a Spanish digital newspaper that publishes daily journalistic texts following international guidelines for the design of easy-to-read documents (IFLA, Tronbacke, 1997).Results: Participants correctly answered 80% of the comprehension questions, showing significantly higher scores for literal questions than for inferential questions. The analyses of the texts' linguistic features revealed that the number of co-references was the variable that best predicted literal comprehension but, contrarily to what previous literature seemed to indicate, the relationship between the two variables was inverse. In the case of inferential comprehension, the number of sentences was a significant negative predictor; i.e. the higher the sentence density, the lower the ability of these students to find relationships between them. The effects of the rest of linguistic variables, such as word frequency and word length, on comprehension were null. Conclusions:These results provide preliminary empirical support for the use of easy-toread texts but bring into question the validity of some popular design guidelines (e.g. augmenting word frequency) to optimally match texts and reading levels of students with intellectual disability. Two factors are suggested as contributing to the effect of sentence density on inferential comprehension: 1) long texts present higher conceptual density so there are more ideas to store, retrieve and integrate which increases the demand on inferential reasoning and 2) long texts are perceived as difficult which

Resumen: La competencia en la lectura digital consiste en la comprensión, uso, reflexión y disfrute de los textos escritos con el fin de conseguir nuestros objetivos, desarrollar nuestro conocimiento y potencial, y participar en nuestra sociedad. En la actualidad se considera que los "nativos digitales", aquellos estudiantes que desde la infancia han crecido rodeados de las tecnologías de la información, poseen las habilidades digitales básicas (usar el ratón, el navegador, …) necesarias para desarrollar la competencia en la lectura digital. En el presente estudio ponemos a prueba esta visión, a partir de un estudio en el que estudiantes de 5º de Primaria y 3º de Secundaria realizaron una serie de tareas de lectura digital. Los estudiantes completaron asimismo varias pruebas objetivas para medir sus habilidades digitales bási-cas, así como si nivel de competencia lectora en papel. Los resultados mostraron que los estudiantes no sólo presentaban dificultades en numerosas habilidades digitales básicas, si no que éstas estaban relacionadas directamente con el éxito en tareas de lectura digital. Para concluir, se reflexiona sobre la necesidad de considerar la instrucción en las habilidades digitales básicas como parte de los esfuerzos actuales por mejorar la competencia en la lectura digital. Palabras clave: Habilidades digitales; lectura digital; comprensión lectora; educación primaria; educación secundaria.Title: Are really digital natives so good? Relationship between digital skills and digital reading. Abstract: Digital reading literacy consists on the comprehension, use, reflection and enjoyment of written texts with the aim to fulfill our goals, to develop our knowledge and potential, and to participate in our society. Currently it is considered that "digital natives", i.e. those students that have been raised surrounded by information technologies, poses the basic digital skills (such as using the mouse, the browser, …) required to develop digital reading skills. The present study tested this assumption, by means of a study in which students of 5th level of primary education and 3rd level of secondary education performed a series of digital reading tasks. In addition, students completed several objective tasks to measure their basic reading skills, and their printed reading comprehension. The results revealed that the groups assessed had difficulties in several basic digital skills, and that those skills are directly related to success rate in digital reading tasks. A regression analysis revealed that this relationship was independent of students" printed reading skills, as well as of students" navigation during the digital reading tasks. To conclude, we reflected on the need to consider the instruction of basic reading skills as part of the current efforts to improve digital reading literacy. Key words: Basic digital skills; digital reading; reading comprehension; primary education; secondary education. IntroducciónLa realidad actual impone el uso de las TIC y entre ellas, el uso de Internet como medio de ad...

Accessibility is one of the key challenges that the Internet must currently face to guarantee universal inclusion. Accessible Web design requires knowledge and experience from the designer, who can be assisted by the use of broadly accepted guidelines. Nevertheless, guideline application may not be obvious, and many designers may lack experience to use them. The difficulty increases because, as the research on accessibility is progressing, existing sets of guidelines are updated and new sets are proposed by diverse institutions. Therefore, the availability of tools to evaluate accessibility, and eventually repair the detected bugs, is crucial. This paper presents a tool, EvalIris, developed to automatically check the accessibility of Websites using sets of guidelines that, by means of a well-defined XML structure, can be easily replaced or updated.

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