Reversing the Reverse Cohesion Effect: Good Texts Can Be Better for Strategic, High-Knowledge Readers

Prior knowledge, reading skill, and text cohesion in the comprehension of science texts

“…As a consequence, they may more shallowly process the high-cohesion text because of a false sense of understanding . This will occur unless they have a higher level of reading skill, which is typically associated with tendency to carefully and systematically process textual information and to generate inferences that relate multiple concepts in the text (O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007). Thus, reading skill induces a high-knowledge reader to actively process the text regardless of its cohesion.…”

“…For example, past research on expository text comprehension has established that how well an individual comprehends and learns from expository texts is a function of a complex interaction between individual differences and text features (Linderholm, Everson, van den Broek, Mischinski, Crittenden et al, 2001;McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996;O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007;Voss & Silfies, 1996).…”

Say more and be more coherent: How text elaboration and cohesion can increase writing quality

“…Coherence, on the other hand, is specific to the reader and refers to the understanding that the reader derives from the text (i.e., coherence is in the mind of the reader). Coherence depends on a number of factors, which may include explicit and implicit cohesion cues, but also nonlinguistic factors such as prior knowledge and reading skill (McNamara, Kintsch, Songer, & Kintsch, 1996;O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007). For young writers, explicit cohesion devices that are local in nature are often used to link sections of text together (e.g., referential pronouns and connectives; King & Rentel, 1979).…”

Working Memory Capacity and Learning Underlying Conceptual Relationships Across Multiple Documents

“…In such cases, the user must rely on what little knowledge they have of the site or document to form an ad hoc representation of how information is organized or presented, and, more importantly, how the material relates together conceptually (Gernsbacher, 1990). This knowledge can include elements such as the perceived structure of the material, existing domain knowledge, or even prior search strategies (Foltz, 1996;Meyer, Middlemiss, & Theodorou, 2002;O'Reilly & McNamara, 2007;Voss & Silfies, 1996). Notably, the more closely this ad hoc structure matches the actual structure of the source, the likelihood that the learner actually understands the material and can thus find additional novel information, also increases (Kintsch & Yarborough, 1982;Mayer, 1982;Taylor, 1982).…”