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- 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
Working memory capacity and fluid intelligence are important predictors of performance in educational settings. Thus, understanding the processes underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence is important. Three large scale individual differences experiments were conducted to determine the mechanisms underlying the relation between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. Experiments 1 and 2 were designed to assess whether individual differences in strategic behavior contribute to the variance shared between working memory capacity and fluid intelligence. In Experiment 3, competing theories for describing the underlying processes (cognitive vs. strategy) were evaluated in a comprehensive examination of potential underlying mechanisms. These data help inform existing theories about the mechanisms underlying the relation between WMC and gF. However, these data also indicate that the current theoretical model of the shared variance between WMC and gF would need to be revised to account for the data in Experiment 3. Possible sources of misfit are considered in the discussion along with a consideration of the theoretical implications of observing those relations in the Experiment 3 data.
ContributorsWingert, Kimberly Marie (Author) / Brewer, Gene A. (Thesis advisor) / McNamara, Danielle (Thesis advisor) / McClure, Samuel (Committee member) / Redick, Thomas (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018