It may not be that difficult the second time around: the effects of rereading on the comprehension and metacomprehension of negated text

Abstract

The present research explored the awareness that readers have of the difficulty of negative text and aimed to determine whether rereading could impact comprehension and metacomprehension. Participants read passages that sometimes contained negative words such as 'no' and 'not', rated their comprehension, and answered a comprehension question about the passage. Half of the passages were read twice and rated again before the participant was prompted to answer a comprehension question. Results showed that passages that were read twice were rated as easier to understand, and questions that corresponded with those passages were answered with higher accuracy as well. However, these improvements were not exclusive to negated passages. And, while participants were aware that the negative passages were harder to comprehend, this understanding did not aid in heightened comprehension of the negative text. Rereading was demonstrated to be a helpful strategy overall but was not sufficient to specifically help with negation. What is already known about this topic• Negation is a type of text construction that is difficult for readers to process and remember. • Readers are aware that negation is difficult, but they are often unable to use this awareness to do anything to improve their comprehension of the text.• Readers have shown some success in improving their comprehension and metacomprehension of text by rereading the text. What this paper adds• While it would seem intuitive that rereading a difficult text construction, like negation, would lead to a reader's improvement in text comprehension, this was not the case. The improvements that were demonstrated in comprehension were not specific to negative passages.• However, rereading did help readers improve metacomprehension for negated text, which indicates that while readers are more aware of the difficulty they are having with the text, they are still having difficulty.• Unfortunately, coupled with the finding that improvements in comprehension were not specific to negated text, it becomes apparent that the awareness

To What Extent Do Situation-Model-Approach Interventions Improve Relative Metacomprehension Accuracy? Meta-Analytic Insights

“…This outcome supports the theoretical distinction between the two mechanisms: Interventions like selfexplaining enable the generation of situation-model cues, whereas rereading enhances the attention to the cues (Griffin et al 2008, Experiment 2). It should be noted, however, that some studies did not find a benefit of rereading over reading once (Chiang et al 2010;Margolin and Snyder 2018), and, in some studies, learners exhibited low relative metacomprehension accuracy despite rereading (Bugg and McDaniel 2012;Pao 2014;, Experiment 1).…”

What Is the Difference? Rereading Shakespeare’s Sonnets —An Eye Tracking Study

“…Expository texts are treated as sources of information stipulating reading processes directed to information intake, so studies using such texts have tended to focus on whether a reader remembers and understands more after the second compared to the first session. The main findings are: firstly, readers who read an expository text twice recalled significantly more than those who read it only once (Amlund et al, 1986;Durgunoǧlu et al, 1993); secondly, rereading facilitated readers to build a better comprehension of the topic (Raney et al, 2000;Rawson et al, 2000;Brown, 2002;Schnitzer and Kowler, 2006;Kaakinen and Hyönä, 2007;Margolin and Snyder, 2018). Meanwhile, researchers were also interested in the influence of rereading on reading fluency, e.g., whether the reading time spent on the text or on single words within that text would be reduced.…”

“…This improvement, widely known as the rereading benefit or rereading effect, has been noted in many studies (see Raney, 2003, for a review). Most of them, however, have been based on the rereading of expository texts (e.g., Hyönä and Niemi, 1990;Levy et al, 1991Levy et al, , 1992Raney and Rayner, 1995;Raney et al, 2000;Rawson et al, 2000;Schnitzer and Kowler, 2006;Kaakinen and Hyönä, 2007;Margolin and Snyder, 2018), only a few of them on the rereading of literary texts (e.g., Dixon et al, 1993;Millis, 1995;Kuijpers and Hakemulder, 2018) and only one of these on the rereading of poetry (Hakemulder, 2004). None of those based on literary texts used direct or indirect methods to record the cognitive processes associated with comprehension and appreciation while they were happening.…”

What’s your pleasure? exploring the predictors of leisure reading for fiction and nonfiction

“…Empirically, these kinds of reading behaviors have been shown to predict language and literacy skills. For example, rereading passages has been found to improve reading fluency in elementary school children (Martin-Chang & Levy, 2005;Martin-Chang et al, 2007) and support reading comprehension in undergraduates (Margolin & Snyder, 2018).…”