Abstracts - Earli

G 130 August 2007 08:30 - 10:30Room: 0.87 MarxSIG Invited SymposiumNew issues and methods in text and graphics comprehension researchChair: Shaaron Ainsworth, University of Nottingham, United KingdomChair: Eduardo Vidal-Abarca, University of Valencia, SpainOrganiser: Eduardo Vidal-Abarca, University of Valencia, SpainOrganiser: Shaaron Ainsworth, University of Nottingham, United KingdomDiscussant: Wolfgang Schnotz, University of Koblenz-Landau, GermanyComputer-based technology opens new possibilities for researchers to deal with new issues andmethods to investigate on-line processes when people understand and learn with text and graphics.This research will produce a better understanding of why some students reach good levels ofunderstanding and learning, whereas some others do not. Magliano and colleagues will present anew test of reading comprehension called the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT) thatelicits and analyzes automatically verbal protocols that readers generate as they read narrative,historical, and scientific texts. Ainsworth and colleagues explores how techniques developed incomputational linguistics and machine learning could be used to help code verbalizations producedwhen students self-explain diagrams of the cardio-vascular system. Boucheix will present resultsbased on eye tracking technologies that get precise behavioural indicators of students’ underlyingprocesses when they understand animated and multiple representations of complex mechanicalsystems. Tabbers’s presentation will deal with research studies using the dual-task paradigm toinvestigate the role of working memory processes when people learn from text and pictures.Validating the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (R-SAT)Joseph P. Magliano, Northern Illinois University, USAKeith K. Millis, Northern Illinois University, USASara Gilliam, Northern Illinois University, USAIrwin Levinstein, Old Dominion University, USAChutima Boonthum, Old Dominion University, USAWe are constructing a new test of reading comprehension called the Reading Strategy AssessmentTool (R-SAT). R-SAT elicits and analyzes verbal protocols that readers generate as they readnarrative, historical, and scientific texts. R-SAT is administered on the computer. R-SAT employsword matching algorithms to assess the quality of test takers’ protocols. After reading pre-selectedtarget sentences, R-SAT readers are asked to produce one of two types of open ended responses:indirect and direct. The indirect approach requires readers to report thoughts regarding theirunderstanding of the sentence in the context of the passage. In the direct method, the readeranswers a "wh-" question about the text. Indirect protocols provide an assessment of readingstrategies, whereas direct protocols provide an assessment of a reader’s ability to access importantprior text information while reading. Three forms of R-SAT have been constructed. The goal ofthe present study was to assess the extent to which these forms are indicative of comprehensionand to compare R-SAT to a traditional standardized reading comprehension test, the Gates-McGinitie (G-M). Participants were administered both R-SAT and the G-M. They also readsilently and answered short answer questions to other texts, which provided the criterion– 363 –