Reading comprehension mechanisms and current models of reading

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Reading is a complex skill. As it is essential in our society, the mechanisms underpinning reading are among the most crucial problems in cognitive psychology. Research has revealed important aspects of reading. For example, extensive research has been conducted on the way our eyes move during reading or what strategies are important to recognize individual words. However, what is surprising is that much remains unknown regarding the main goal of reading: comprehension. The current research program will explore reading comprehension mechanisms as well as the role of comprehension in areas of reading where it has been neglected. More precisely, the current research program specifically examines the role of syntax in reading comprehension. It is beyond dispute that syntax plays a critical role in conveying the meaning of a sentence. For instance, the sentence "the man killed the dog" has a very different meaning than the sentence "the dog killed the man", even if both sentences are made of the same words. However, while most theoretical models suggest that syntax is important, they vary on the relative importance that they give to syntactic processing. According to one class of models, syntactic processing must always be fully completed before other processing, important for extraction of the sentence meaning, are completed. Other models, however, assumed that a detailed syntactic processing is not required for meaning extraction. In other words, within these models, syntactic processing can be bypassed. My students and I will make use of a variety of methodologies and strategies to help understand the role of syntax in reading comprehension. Since all individuals do not read at the same pace or extract the same amount of information from their readings, we will make use of individual differences in reading skills to help clarify the debate. Furthermore, we will also examine the role of the difficulty of the text in the information that is extracted during reading. The main goal of this program is, first, to clarify the role of syntax in reading comprehension and second, to help understand the mechanisms of reading comprehension to modify theoretical models accordingly.