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Determinantes psicolingüísticos da compreensão de leitura em inglês como língua estrangeira 25was to control for textual variables (text length, lexicaldensity, conceptual density, structure, typographical clues).Multiple-choice items evaluating the reader’sperformance on each of the four main levels of strategicdiscourse processing proposed by Van Dijk and Kintsch(1983) were developed for each text. Items werepresented in Spanish in both tests in order to avoidadditional task demands associated to the understandingof the evaluation items in the foreign language. Finalversions of the tests were revised and piloted usingteachers of English as judges. The final version for eachinstruments contained 45 items classified as follows:Sections 1 and 2. Macropropositional Level (Items1-17) Included 10 multiple choice and 7 true-false itemsevaluating the ability of the reader to discriminate andintegrate the main macro ideas in the text both at a globaland at a local level.Section 3. Local Coherence Level (Items 18-25).Included 8 multiple-choice items centered on theevaluation of contextual referents within the text, as wellas on the ability of the reader to follow the argumentativenetwork in the text.Section 4. Propositional Level (Items 26-40). Thissection was based on a “cloze” format and focused onthe evaluation of the reader’s ability to integrate syntactic,morphological, discursive, lexical and grammaticalinformation at a propositional level.Test of Perception of Lexical Transparencybetween L1 and L2. The test measured the ability ofthe reader to perceive cognates (words sharing bothsimilar form and meaning in two languages) within anacademic text. The test was based on a short expositorytext about chemistry (“The Nobel Prizes”), publishedin Scientific American. The text was initially pilotedwith a group of experts who were asked to underlineall English-Spanish cognates included in it, with exactregistration made of their response times. From theprevious procedure 134 words were categorized ascognates (those words selected as such by all theexperts). On the other hand, and according to the meanresponse time between experts, a response time of 5min. was established for the administration of the test(the idea being to obtain an indicator of the reader’sfirst impression during a first read of the article andnot of a word-by word analytical process not naturalduring normal reading). The grading for the test rangesbetween 0 (minimum possible value) and 134(maximum possible value).Action Control Scale. The Action Control Scale(Kuhl, 1991) is a 36-item instrument divided into threesubscales (action control during performance, failure anddecision taking). Each subscale is integrated by 12 itemsdescribing particular problem situations. For eachsituation the subject is given an alternative between twopossible response alternatives, either A or B (one orientedtowards action and the other towards an emotional state).The grading of the subjects’ responses for each subscaleis based o the count of the total of action-orientedresponses (between 0 and 12). In order to provide foreffects associated with item presentation, items aredistributed at random as well as options A and B. In thecase of this study, only the subject’s scores for the AOFscale were taken into consideration.Levenson Internality-Externality Scale. (Romero-García & Pérez, 1985). This instrument is centered onthe analysis of the subjects´ locus of control within aninternal-external dimension. It includes 24 Likert-typeitems ranging between 0 (totally disagree) and 6 (totallyagree). The total internality score for the subject (IT) isobtained adding separately the scores for each one ofthe three subscales of the instrument.Procedure. Administration of instruments wascarried out on a group basis and involved three twohoursessions per group. A total of 27 group sessionswere held (9 groups analyzed). The administration ofreading comprehension tests was carried out on the basisof a counterbalance procedure regarding the followingcriteria: (1) order of language evaluation (L1 or L2);and (2) version of exam administered (Text A or Text Bin each language). Statistical analyses included a seriesof descriptive, correlational, and multiple regressionanalyses, an were conducted using the StatisticalPackage for Social Sciences (SPSS).RESULTSThe final sample for the study included 280undergraduate college students, 118 males (42.1%) and 162females (57.9%). The mean age for the sample 23.06 years.105 of the participants were from the UNAM whereas175 of them were students at UAM. As to their field ofstudies, 208 (74.3%) were from the Division of SocialSciences and Humanities; 38 (13.6%) from the Division ofBasic Sciences and Engineering; and 34 (12.0% from theDivision of Biological and Health Sciences.Psicologia Escolar e Educacional, 2003 Volume 7 Número 1 21-31