Chasing Theory with Technology: A Quest to Understand Understanding

ABSTRACT

An overarching motivation driving my research has been to further our theoretical understanding of how readers successfully comprehend challenging text. This article describes the theoretical origins of this research program and my quest to understand comprehension processes through the use of technology. Coh-Metrix was developed to measure, and in turn facilitate, manipulations of text cohesion and text ease. iSTART was developed to provide students with instruction and practice on how to explain text and more effectively make use of limited prior knowledge. In addition, we have developed technologies to measure and change writing quality, relations between ideas, and emerging text comprehension. More recently, our attention has turned to comprehension of multiple documents. Understanding relations between documents and how comprehension emerges when reading multiple sources is important educationally and socially, where the internet provides a continuous stream of reliable and unreliable sources. Across these topics, my collaborators and I have conducted numerous experimental studies, but a central theme to my work has been the use of technology. This article describes these technologies, including natural language processing, game-based tutoring systems, and computational simulations; how they were informed by theory; and how they have informed my theoretical and practical understandings of language, comprehension, social interactions, and cognition as multilayered and multidimensional within what I refer to as the M&M Framework.

Acknowledgments

I am extremely grateful to the Society for Text and Discourse, for the honor of granting me the Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award and the mentorship and support from the leaders and members throughout my career, and for the sincere congeniality of the society. I am also sincerely grateful to all of the mentors, colleagues, mentees, and students with whom I have worked with over the past 30+ years; their names appear throughout this tribute. I also extend my gratitude to my friend and colleague, Pani Kendeou, who provided feedback on the first version of this manuscript; Paul Van Den Broek, Morton Ann Gernsbacher, and an anonymous reviewer, who reviewed this article and provided extremely helpful feedback; and the members of my lab, including Tracy Arner, Tong Li, and Natalie Newton, who helped me to put the final touches on this manuscript, in particular the figures, illustrations, and the hopeful absence of typos. I am infinitely grateful to my husband, Grant Sinclair, who has supported me throughout my career in so many ways. Finally, I am grateful to the James S. McDonnell Foundation for jump-starting my career and to my current funding agencies: this article was partially supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through grants R305A190063, R305A190050, R305A180144, R305A180261, R305C160004,

R305A150176, and by the Office of Naval Research grants N00014-19-1-2424, N00014-20-1-2623, and N00014-17-1-2300. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent views of the IES, the U.S. Department of Education, or ONR.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Our beloved Carol Connor passed away during the first year of iSTART-Early funding in 2020. Her contributions to the development of the iSTART-Early project were enormous. She is missed.

2. I refer to this as a framework rather than a model because, as Herb Clark explained to me during his Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award address, a Framework is not intended to be testable; it is a theoretical approach to examining your targeted phenomena.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences (grants R305A190063, R305A190050, R305A180144, R305A180261, R305C160004, and R305A150176) and Office of Naval Research (grants N00014-20-1-2623, N00014-19-1-2424, and N00014-17-1-2300). The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S. Department of Education or the Office of Naval Research.