Cognitive processes of middle grade readers when reading expository text with an assigned goal

Effects of text structure, reading goals and epistemic beliefs on conceptual change

“…It appears that a general comprehension goal allows for more cognitive resources to be devoted to elaborative processing than goals that prime the reader to focus their attention on understanding specific information. This is consistent with previous findings on the effects of reading goals, which showed that entertainment or nonspecific reading goals supported associative and elaborative processing related to the text content, in contrast to study or content‐specific reading goals that supported the construction of a mental representation of the text (Linderholm & van den Broek, ; Tilstra & McMaster, ).…”

“…Elaborative interrogation instructions are presumably advantageous because they prompt readers to construct within‐text coherence through additional inferences and, importantly for conceptual change, greater connections to prior background knowledge. Further, Tilstra and McMaster () have found that specific reading goals (i.e., goals that focus the reader's attention to targeted parts of the text) result in a smaller proportion of comprehension‐building think‐aloud processes (i.e., text‐based, elaborative and predictive inferences) and a greater proportion of study think‐aloud processes (i.e., rereading, paraphrasing and monitoring). Taken together, readers alter their online reading processes as a function of goals assigned to them, with elaborative interrogations that support broad coherence construction in contrast to specific goals that support focused attention on limited content.…”

The importance of word and world knowledge for the successful strategic processing of multiple texts online

“…One important factor for comprehension success is interest in the material to be studied and a clear purpose or goal for reading (Tilstra and McMaster ; Hidi ). Unlike other studies already mentioned, this study took a domain already chosen by the participants as one of their A level choices and gave them a purpose such as they would see in their final exam.…”