This interdisciplinary research project focuses on the way adults with varying age and cognitive profiles choose what to read in order to learn when they have access to multiple sources of text. The contemporary science of literacy faces challenges from rapid changes in the nature of both reading and the reader. As literacy moves into electronic environments, learning rarely is characterized by steady, linear progress through a textbook or given set of texts. Rather, it is increasingly dependent on the learner's ability to effectively navigate through multiple sources of information that self-regulates the flow of information. At the same time, the population is rapidly aging, and longer lifespans as associated with longer workspans, with the need for expanding skill sets placing more demands on lifelong literacy. In this exploratory study, the researchers will seek to understand how reading processes operate in contemporary ecologies of literacy. The project is grounded in theories and methods from the psychological, education, and computer sciences. Much is known about the psychology and neuroscience of reading in terms of the cognitive processes underlying how meaning is constructed from the printed word, but missing from this perspective is the ecology of reading in which individuals must choose what to read. This gap is addressed through the use of computer science approaches in the study of web browsing, which consider how learners explore information sources. These approaches neglect the processes through which mental representations of meaning are created through the encounter with particular texts, however. This project's researchers will start with the assumption that in authentic ecologies of literacy, individuals both explore (search, navigate, forage) and exploit (read) particular texts for various purposes, including information gathering. Their emphasis will be on "reading in the wild" -- on how these different phases of literacy interact and influence one another in complex ecologies of literacy. A range of computational, experimental, and naturalistic methods will be used, including studies of how individuals learn about a topic through exploration on an electronic tablet, where they select buttons with content cues to reveal sentences that provide information about the topic. Patterns of choice, timing, and memory performance will be measured to build models of exploration and information uptake (exploitation). This research is will probe exploration as an adaptation that plays a domain-general role in cognition, augments learning by increasing efficiency of information uptake, and affords the opportunity for learners to achieve a match between text and cognitive resources.
Models of learning in complex text environments are needed to guide instructional design in new reading ecologies, especially among adults for whom literacy engagement is primarily self-guided. This project will enrich theoretical understanding of reading as a complex learning and problem solving skill needed by people of all ages. It will develop a measurement and modeling approach to study how people read when confronted with multiple options through the use of data from electronic tablets that will allow the direct assessment of literacy behaviors. The project also will involve graduate and undergraduate students from educational psychology, computer science, and engineering in order to enhance interdisciplinary education and training opportunities in literacy science. This project is supported through the NSF Interdisciplinary Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (IBSS) competition.
