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- All Subjects: Reading comprehension
- Creators: McNamara, Danielle
Description
Do good readers embody more or less? The current investigation examined embodiment effects as a function of individual reading skill in the context of two cognitive theories of reading comprehension. The Construction-Integration model predicts that sensorimotor activity during reading will correlate negatively with reading skill, because good readers focus on relations among abstract ideas derived from the text. Supposedly those abstract ideas have little or no sensorimotor content, hence any sensorimotor activity while reading is wasted effort. In contrast, the simulation theory predicts that sensorimotor activity will correlate positively with reading skill, because good readers create a simulation of what is happening within the text to comprehend it. The simulation is based in neural and bodily systems of action, perception, and emotion. These opposing predictions were tested using the reading-by-rotation paradigm to measure embodiment effects. Those effects were then correlated with reading skill measured using the Gates-McGinite standardized reading test. Analyses revealed an unexpected interaction between condition and congruency, and a negative relationship between embodiment and reading skill. Several caveats to the results are discussed.
ContributorsRakestraw, Hannah Marie (Author) / Glenberg, Arthur (Thesis director) / McNamara, Danielle (Committee member) / Van Gelderen, Elly (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-12
Description
The purposes of the study are to: 1) investigate how students' motivation towards reading is related to their reading comprehension skills, and 2) assess the impact of using an Intelligent Tutoring System to improve comprehension. Interactive Strategy Training for Active Reading and Thinking-3 (iSTART-3) is a game-based tutoring system designed to improve students' reading comprehension skills. The current study was conducted in South Africa with 8th and 9th graders between the ages of 14 and 18. These students are multilingual and they learn English as a First Additional Language (English-FAL). Firstly, we predict that students who are highly motivated to read will have high comprehension scores than those who are slightly or not at all motivated to read. Secondly, we predict that the use of iSTART-3 will improve students' reading comprehension, regardless of their level of reading motivation, with better results for those who are more motivated to read. Counter to our predictions, the results did not reveal a relation between reading motivation and reading comprehension. Furthermore, an effect of iSTART-3 on reading comprehension was not found. These results were likely influenced by the small sample size and the length of the intervention.
ContributorsSeerane, Thato (Author) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis director) / Glenberg, Arthur (Committee member) / Lynch, Christa (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12