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The study aimed at exploring the psychological as well as educational outcomes of strategies awareness and use. We set out to examine the effect of reading strategic investment on language achievement and problem solving ability (PSA). The participating EFL learners were heterogeneous in terms of reading instruction; two of the intact groups had received normal instruction studying selected short stories with a primary focus on vocabulary development and comprehension check, whereas the second group had been trained under a strategies-based instruction over two consecutive semesters by one of the researchers. A descriptive data collection procedure and follow-up exploratory and confirmatory analyses revealed metacognitive and cognitive strategies positively affect the enhancement of PSA and reading comprehension achievement (RCA). It was found, however, that metacognitive strategies are more effective for the development of PSA whereas cognitive strategies contribute to RCA more than their metacognitive counterparts.

Unlike such cognitive impairments as autism and schizophrenia, the speech pattern in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has largely remained underrepresented. We examined the pragmatic competence of OCD-affected individuals under two variant modes: pragmatic recognition and pragmatic production. In the recognition phase, the informants completed a discourse completion test around two speech acts of request and apology (20 high power distance situations). The production phase was carried out through an interview during which the informants' communication behaviors were rated on the basis of the Orion's pragmatic language skills checklist (OPLS) subscales. No significant difference was observed between the normal and OCD groups in terms of pragmatic recognition. Moreover, considering the OPLS subscales, although the normal controls significantly outperformed in non-verbal communication and expressive skills, the overall pragmatic production ability of the two groups was statistically alike. The results are discussed in relation to the two competing disorders of autism and social anxiety.

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Cognitive organizers (COs) are text aids which represent objects, concepts, and their relations by the use of symbols and spatial arrangements without adding to semantic content. The present study examines language learners’ text comprehension through outlines, a popular CO, compared with text-only condition, and further investigates the effect of learner-constructed outlines (i.e., systematic note-taking) and expert-constructed outlines (i.e., readymade displays) on comprehension. Finally, the predictive power of multiple intelligences (MI) across different input modalities is scrutinized. Following stratified random sampling, a total of 111 EFL undergraduates were divided into text-only (receiving a text twice), expert-constructed (the text followed by an outline), and learner-constructed (the text followed by an outline to be drawn up by the learner) groups. A TOEFL examination, a 1218-word expository text on systematic sleep disorder, a follow-up reading comprehension test, and a multiple intelligences inventory constituted the data collection measures. The results of multiple regression and ANOVA were as follows: (a) COs lead to more content recall than text displays; (b) expert-constructed and learner-constructed outlines are equally effective; (c) MI significantly predicts the groups’ reading comprehension; (d) interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences are significant correlates of text-only groups’ performance; and (e) visual, verbal, and intrapersonal intelligences are significantly associated with learner-constructed groups’ reading scores. The study offers several implications for theory and practice.