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
The present research aimed to determine the circumstances under which comprehension between paper and e-readers is comparable and what role working memory plays in successful comprehension of text presented in these formats. Narrative and expository texts were presented in electronic and paper formats to determine whether readers glean different information for these text types via different presentation formats. Results indicated that comprehension for paper and electronic formats may not be equivalent. Although comprehension of thematic information presented via e-reader was better than when reading for detail (as in expository passages), it did not lead to comprehension as successfully as printed text. In addition, removing working memory led to the disappearance of the effects of presentation method and the type of questions, suggesting that it was important for individual differences in use of the e-reader device. Implications for the appropriate use of e-readers are discussed.In the past, reading material was presented primarily via paper-based documents such as newspapers, magazines,
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