The Contributions of Informal Home Literacy Activities to Specific Higher-Level Comprehension Processes.

This study shows that home literacy activities contribute to kindergarten children's higher-level comprehension processes, namely knowledge integration and knowledge access. Kindergarten children completed measures assessing literacy and language skills and then their performances on these measures were correlated with home literacy activities, which were assessed via a parental questionnaire. Consistent with previous research, the results revealed that informal home literacy activities were positively related to language comprehension and vocabulary but not to letter-word decoding and phonemic decoding skills.

Not All Factors Contribute Equally to European-American and Hispanic Students' SAT Scores.

This exploratory study shows that the contributions of cognitive, metacognitive awareness, performance avoidance, test anxiety, and socioeconomic family background factors to SAT scores (i.e., overall SAT, SAT-V, SAT-M) may vary as a function of ethnicity (i.

Hispanics' SAT Scores: The Influences of Level of Parental Education, Performance-Avoidance Goals, and Knowledge about Learning.

This study uncovers which learning (epistemic belief of learning), socio-economic background (level of parental education, family income) or social-personality factors (performance- avoidance goals, test anxiety) mitigate the ethnic gap in SAT scores. Measures assessing achievement motivation, test anxiety, socio-economic family background, and epistemic belief of learning were administered to 143 European-American and 62 Hispanic students. Analysis of covariance revealed that the measures of epistemic belief of learning, performance-avoidance goals, and level of parental education each had a unique influence on combined SAT (SAT-V + SAT-M), SAT-V, and SAT-M scores.

Conscious and unconscious detection of semantic anomalies.

When asked What superhero is associated with bats, Robin, the Penguin, Metropolis, Catwoman, the Riddler, the Joker, and Mr. Freeze? people frequently fail to notice the anomalous word Metropolis. The goals of this study were to determine whether detection of semantic anomalies, like Metropolis, is conscious or unconscious and whether this detection is immediate or delayed.

Predicting College Success: The Relative Contributions of Five Social/Personality Factors, Five Cognitive/Learning Factors, and SAT Scores.

To-date, studies have examined simultaneously the relative predictive powers of two or three factors on GPA. The present study examines the relative powers of five social/personality factors, five cognitive/learning factors, and SAT scores to predict freshmen and non-freshmen (sophomores, juniors, seniors) academic success (i.e.

The Influences of Pre-testing Reviews and Delays on Differentialassociative Processing versus A Condition in which Students chose their Learning Strategy.

Recent studies show that a new strategy called differential-associative processing is effective for learning related concepts. However our knowledge about differential-associative processing is still limited. Therefore the goals of the present study are to assess the duration of knowledge that is acquired from using differential-associative processing, to determine whether the efficacy of differential-associative processing changes with the addition of a 10-minute pre-testing review, and to compare differential-associate processing to two conditions in which students select their own learning strategy.

Test anxiety and performance-avoidance goals explain gender differences in SAT-V, SAT-M, and overall SAT scores.

This study uses analysis of co-variance in order to determine which cognitive/learning (working memory, knowledge integration, epistemic belief of learning) or social/personality factors (test anxiety, performance-avoidance goals) might account for gender differences in SAT-V, SAT-M, and overall SAT scores. The results revealed that none of the cognitive/learning factors accounted for gender differences in SAT performance. However, the social/personality factors of test anxiety and performance-avoidance goals each separately accounted for all of the significant gender differences in SAT-V, SAT-M, and overall SAT performance.

Differential-associative processing or example elaboration: Which strategy is best for learning the definitions of related and unrelated concepts?

Definitions of related concepts (e.g., -) are prevalent in introductory classes.

SAT Performance: Understanding the Contributions of Cognitive/Learning and Social/Personality Factors.

This study identifies a number of sources of individual differences in SAT performance by examining the simultaneous contributions of factors from two otherwise disparate research areas, namely cognition/learning and social/personality. Preliminary analysis revealed that just the cognitive/learning measures accounted for 37.8, 41.

Age-related changes in reading comprehension: an individual-differences perspective.

In this study, the authors show that Hannon and Daneman's (2001, Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 103-128) component processes task can be used to investigate individual differences in older readers' comprehension performance, and to determine which components of comprehension are most susceptible to declines with normal aging. Results revealed that the ability to remember new text information, to make inferences about new text information, to access prior knowledge in long-term memory, and to integrate prior knowledge with new text information all accounted for a substantial proportion of variance in older adults' reading comprehension performance. Although there were age-related declines in all of these component processes, the components associated with new learning were more susceptible to age-related declines than were the components associated with accessing what already is known.

Prospective memory: the relative effects of encoding, retrieval, and the match between encoding and retrieval.

Previous prospective memory studies have revealed some important features of encoding, retrieval, and the match between the encoding and the retrieval that contribute to prospective memory performance. However, these studies have not provided evidence concerning the relative importance of these three factors because no study has investigated all three in a single design. We developed a laboratory-based paradigm that allowed us to manipulate different characteristics of encoding, retrieval, and the match between encoding and retrieval simultaneously in a single experiment.

Using working memory theory to investigate the construct validity of multiple-choice reading comprehension tests such as the SAT.

When taking multiple-choice tests of reading comprehension such as the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), test takers use a range of strategies that vary in the extent to which they emphasize reading the questions versus reading the passages. Researchers have challenged the construct validity of these tests because test takers can achieve better-than-chance performance even if they do not read the passages at all. By using an individual-differences approach that compares the relative power of working memory span to predict SAT performance for different test-taking strategies, the authors show that the SAT appears to be tapping reading comprehension processes as long as test takers engage in at least some reading of the passages themselves.