TY - JOUR
T1 - Connectives and layout as processing signals
T2 - How textual features affect students’ processing and text representation
AU - van Silfhout, Gerdineke
AU - Evers-Vermeul, Jacqueline
AU - Mak, Willem M.
AU - Sanders, Ted J.M.
PY - 2014
Y1 - 2014
N2 - When students read their school text, they may make a coherent mental representation of it that contains coherence relations between the text segments. The construction of such a representation is a prerequisite for learning from texts. This article focuses on the influence of connectives (therefore, furthermore) and layout (continuous placement of sentences vs. each sentence beginning a new line) on the dynamics of the reading process as well as the quality of students’ mental representation. The results shed light on the cognitive reading processes of students in secondary education, which allows us to explain effects of text features on off-line comprehension measures. Our eye-tracking data emphasize the importance of connectives: Connectives speed up students’ processing, especially when texts have a continuous layout. In contrast, students’ processing slows when they read texts with a discontinuous layout. Our data also show a correlation between reading times and scores on bridging inference tasks: Students who read faster have higher comprehension scores. These findings indicate that explicit texts with a continuous layout place fewer processing demands on students’ working memory.
AB - When students read their school text, they may make a coherent mental representation of it that contains coherence relations between the text segments. The construction of such a representation is a prerequisite for learning from texts. This article focuses on the influence of connectives (therefore, furthermore) and layout (continuous placement of sentences vs. each sentence beginning a new line) on the dynamics of the reading process as well as the quality of students’ mental representation. The results shed light on the cognitive reading processes of students in secondary education, which allows us to explain effects of text features on off-line comprehension measures. Our eye-tracking data emphasize the importance of connectives: Connectives speed up students’ processing, especially when texts have a continuous layout. In contrast, students’ processing slows when they read texts with a discontinuous layout. Our data also show a correlation between reading times and scores on bridging inference tasks: Students who read faster have higher comprehension scores. These findings indicate that explicit texts with a continuous layout place fewer processing demands on students’ working memory.
U2 - 10.1037/a0036293
DO - 10.1037/a0036293
M3 - Article
SN - 0022-0663
VL - 106
SP - 1036
EP - 1048
JO - Journal of Educational Psychology
JF - Journal of Educational Psychology
IS - 4
ER -