Nathalie Cote - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Nathalie Cote

Research paper thumbnail of Children's Use of Prior Knowledge and Experience in Understanding Informational Text on Nutrition

A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a ... more A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a text, and how that influences what they recall from the text. Subjects, 46 sixth graders from 3 elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were tape recorded as they thought aloud while reading either a passage on "sugar" or a passage on "fat." Passages were of similar length and were at grade 5 level of reading difficulty. Subjects also dictated their recall of the passage. Results indicated that the majority of the children's think-aloud comments were some kind of attempt to explain or elaborate on the text, with the largest category being bringing in information from prior knowledge or experience to help understand the text. Results also indicated that: (1) the amount of information recalled from texts was very low; (2) more students included in their recalls information from sentenced adults rated as important in the text; and (3) no statistically significant correlations existed between amount recalled and reading percentile score on the subjects' Tennessee achievement test reading comprehension scores. Two case studies illustrate the relationship between what the children were doing as they read and what their recall reports were like. Individual differences evident in think-aloud protocols led to the conclusion that memory measures such as the recall report do not adequately capture the richness and depth of children's understanding of text. (A figure and a table of data are included; the think-aloud protocols-.nd recall reports of the two case study subjects are attached.) (RS) Rfpl idnctions snpplied by EMS are the best I hat can be mache from the original document.

Research paper thumbnail of Paragraphing, reader, and task effects on discourse comprehension

Discourse Processes, 1995

Page 1. DISCOURSE PROCESSES 20, 273-305 (1995) Paragraphing, Reader, and Task Effects on Discours... more Page 1. DISCOURSE PROCESSES 20, 273-305 (1995) Paragraphing, Reader, and Task Effects on Discourse Comprehension SUSAN R. GOLDMAN ELIZABETH U. SAUL NATHALIE COTÉ Vanderbilt University Interactions ...

Research paper thumbnail of Children's Use of Prior Knowledge and Experience in Making Sense of Informational Text

A study examined how elementary school children spontaneously construct meaning when reading info... more A study examined how elementary school children spontaneously construct meaning when reading informational text. In particular, the study explored: what kinds of knowledge they draw on and how they use it to help them understand what they read; and how does what they do influence what they recall. Twenty-nine 6th graders from two elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were taught to think aloud as they tried to understand novel information. Subjects' thinking processes were observed as the children read non-narrative informational texts on science and nutrition on a computer screen. These texts were 21-27 sentences in length. Analysis of data showed that children did not take a passive approach to reading. Instead, they drew on prior knowledge and experience to construct a coherent representation of the text information, although a coherent representation did not necessarily mean an accurate one. Children also used other activities to make sense of new information. Some of these activities were: monitoring, integrating across texts, and paraphrasing or rephrasing content. Further research into the nature of students' representations and the relationship of these representations to recall reports is needed. (The experimental texts are appended.) (JW)

Research paper thumbnail of Overcoming the Inert Knowledge Problem in Learning from Expository Text

Research paper thumbnail of Learning from Informational Text: Understanding Students’ Processing and Construction of Representations

Research paper thumbnail of Chairing the Academic Department

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Poetry as a Mnemonic Prompt in Children's Stories

Reading Psychology, 2006

ABSTRACT This research investigates the effects of prosody on children's recall for stori... more ABSTRACT This research investigates the effects of prosody on children's recall for stories using two successive studies. Study 1 is an ethnographic exploration of a group of fifth graders creating summaries of a children's story with overt prosodic elements. Study 2 is a quasi-experiment in which the story summaries created by students who heard one of two versions (more or less prosodic) of the story from Study 1 were compared. Overall, we find that the amount of prosody in a story has a significant effect on children's story recall and the quality of the stories they produce.

Research paper thumbnail of Students making sense of informational text: Relations between processing and representation

Discourse Processes, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of The development of self-directed learning strategies in problem-based learning

Students often leave school without the skills needed for lifelong learning. This is particularly... more Students often leave school without the skills needed for lifelong learning. This is particularly problematic in technical fields such as medicine and engineering where the knowledge is continually changing and advancing [Eden, et al., 1996]. To prepare students for the lifelong learning required for success in such fields, students need to have experience in self-directed learning (SDL) while in school. An innovative approach to learning that explicitly does this is problem-based learning, an educational methodology ...

Research paper thumbnail of Encoding and recall of texts: The importance of material appropriate processing

A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different ... more A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different effects across different types of texts. The present research attempted to substantiate and explore a material appropriate processing framework (McDaniel, Einstein, Dunay, & Cobb, 1986) for understanding these effects. The central features of this framework are: (a) high recall occurs when subjects encode both relational and individual-item information and (b) different types of materials and processing activities encourage encoding of different types of information. Consequently, a processing activity should be effective to the extent that it encourages processing of the type of information that is not sufficiently invited by the stimulus material. Past tests of this framework were limited to one instance of a relational task and one instance of an individual-item task. The first experiment demonstrated that the framework applies to other tasks-ones that bear little surface relationship to previously used tasks. The second experiment showed that the mnemonic benefits of material appropriate processing activities persist over a one-week delay and indicated that relational processing may be especially beneficial for long-term retention. The third experiment examined the relation between degree of difficulty of a material appropriate task and memory. The results indicated that increases in difficulty beyond some moderate level have no, and possibly even negative, effects on memory. Taken together, the results support and clarify a material appropriate processing perspective. 0 1990 Academic P~CSS, 1~2.

Research paper thumbnail of Encoding and recall of texts: The importance of material appropriate processing

A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different ... more A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different effects across different types of texts. The present research attempted to substantiate and explore a material appropriate processing framework (McDaniel, Einstein, Dunay, & Cobb, 1986) for understanding these effects. The central features of this framework are: (a) high recall occurs when subjects encode both relational and individual-item information and (b) different types of materials and processing activities encourage encoding of different types of information. Consequently, a processing activity should be effective to the extent that it encourages processing of the type of information that is not sufficiently invited by the stimulus material. Past tests of this framework were limited to one instance of a relational task and one instance of an individual-item task. The first experiment demonstrated that the framework applies to other tasks-ones that bear little surface relationship to previously used tasks. The second experiment showed that the mnemonic benefits of material appropriate processing activities persist over a one-week delay and indicated that relational processing may be especially beneficial for long-term retention. The third experiment examined the relation between degree of difficulty of a material appropriate task and memory. The results indicated that increases in difficulty beyond some moderate level have no, and possibly even negative, effects on memory. Taken together, the results support and clarify a material appropriate processing perspective. 0 1990 Academic P~CSS, 1~2.

Research paper thumbnail of Children's Use of Prior Knowledge and Experience in Understanding Informational Text on Nutrition

A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a ... more A study examined how students use their prior knowledge and experience to help them understand a text, and how that influences what they recall from the text. Subjects, 46 sixth graders from 3 elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were tape recorded as they thought aloud while reading either a passage on "sugar" or a passage on "fat." Passages were of similar length and were at grade 5 level of reading difficulty. Subjects also dictated their recall of the passage. Results indicated that the majority of the children's think-aloud comments were some kind of attempt to explain or elaborate on the text, with the largest category being bringing in information from prior knowledge or experience to help understand the text. Results also indicated that: (1) the amount of information recalled from texts was very low; (2) more students included in their recalls information from sentenced adults rated as important in the text; and (3) no statistically significant correlations existed between amount recalled and reading percentile score on the subjects' Tennessee achievement test reading comprehension scores. Two case studies illustrate the relationship between what the children were doing as they read and what their recall reports were like. Individual differences evident in think-aloud protocols led to the conclusion that memory measures such as the recall report do not adequately capture the richness and depth of children's understanding of text. (A figure and a table of data are included; the think-aloud protocols-.nd recall reports of the two case study subjects are attached.) (RS) Rfpl idnctions snpplied by EMS are the best I hat can be mache from the original document.

Research paper thumbnail of Paragraphing, reader, and task effects on discourse comprehension

Discourse Processes, 1995

Page 1. DISCOURSE PROCESSES 20, 273-305 (1995) Paragraphing, Reader, and Task Effects on Discours... more Page 1. DISCOURSE PROCESSES 20, 273-305 (1995) Paragraphing, Reader, and Task Effects on Discourse Comprehension SUSAN R. GOLDMAN ELIZABETH U. SAUL NATHALIE COTÉ Vanderbilt University Interactions ...

Research paper thumbnail of Children's Use of Prior Knowledge and Experience in Making Sense of Informational Text

A study examined how elementary school children spontaneously construct meaning when reading info... more A study examined how elementary school children spontaneously construct meaning when reading informational text. In particular, the study explored: what kinds of knowledge they draw on and how they use it to help them understand what they read; and how does what they do influence what they recall. Twenty-nine 6th graders from two elementary schools in Nashville, Tennessee, were taught to think aloud as they tried to understand novel information. Subjects' thinking processes were observed as the children read non-narrative informational texts on science and nutrition on a computer screen. These texts were 21-27 sentences in length. Analysis of data showed that children did not take a passive approach to reading. Instead, they drew on prior knowledge and experience to construct a coherent representation of the text information, although a coherent representation did not necessarily mean an accurate one. Children also used other activities to make sense of new information. Some of these activities were: monitoring, integrating across texts, and paraphrasing or rephrasing content. Further research into the nature of students' representations and the relationship of these representations to recall reports is needed. (The experimental texts are appended.) (JW)

Research paper thumbnail of Overcoming the Inert Knowledge Problem in Learning from Expository Text

Research paper thumbnail of Learning from Informational Text: Understanding Students’ Processing and Construction of Representations

Research paper thumbnail of Chairing the Academic Department

Oxford Handbooks Online, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Poetry as a Mnemonic Prompt in Children's Stories

Reading Psychology, 2006

ABSTRACT This research investigates the effects of prosody on children's recall for stori... more ABSTRACT This research investigates the effects of prosody on children's recall for stories using two successive studies. Study 1 is an ethnographic exploration of a group of fifth graders creating summaries of a children's story with overt prosodic elements. Study 2 is a quasi-experiment in which the story summaries created by students who heard one of two versions (more or less prosodic) of the story from Study 1 were compared. Overall, we find that the amount of prosody in a story has a significant effect on children's story recall and the quality of the stories they produce.

Research paper thumbnail of Students making sense of informational text: Relations between processing and representation

Discourse Processes, 1998

Research paper thumbnail of The development of self-directed learning strategies in problem-based learning

Students often leave school without the skills needed for lifelong learning. This is particularly... more Students often leave school without the skills needed for lifelong learning. This is particularly problematic in technical fields such as medicine and engineering where the knowledge is continually changing and advancing [Eden, et al., 1996]. To prepare students for the lifelong learning required for success in such fields, students need to have experience in self-directed learning (SDL) while in school. An innovative approach to learning that explicitly does this is problem-based learning, an educational methodology ...

Research paper thumbnail of Encoding and recall of texts: The importance of material appropriate processing

A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different ... more A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different effects across different types of texts. The present research attempted to substantiate and explore a material appropriate processing framework (McDaniel, Einstein, Dunay, & Cobb, 1986) for understanding these effects. The central features of this framework are: (a) high recall occurs when subjects encode both relational and individual-item information and (b) different types of materials and processing activities encourage encoding of different types of information. Consequently, a processing activity should be effective to the extent that it encourages processing of the type of information that is not sufficiently invited by the stimulus material. Past tests of this framework were limited to one instance of a relational task and one instance of an individual-item task. The first experiment demonstrated that the framework applies to other tasks-ones that bear little surface relationship to previously used tasks. The second experiment showed that the mnemonic benefits of material appropriate processing activities persist over a one-week delay and indicated that relational processing may be especially beneficial for long-term retention. The third experiment examined the relation between degree of difficulty of a material appropriate task and memory. The results indicated that increases in difficulty beyond some moderate level have no, and possibly even negative, effects on memory. Taken together, the results support and clarify a material appropriate processing perspective. 0 1990 Academic P~CSS, 1~2.

Research paper thumbnail of Encoding and recall of texts: The importance of material appropriate processing

A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different ... more A consistent recent fmding in the memory literature is that processing activities have different effects across different types of texts. The present research attempted to substantiate and explore a material appropriate processing framework (McDaniel, Einstein, Dunay, & Cobb, 1986) for understanding these effects. The central features of this framework are: (a) high recall occurs when subjects encode both relational and individual-item information and (b) different types of materials and processing activities encourage encoding of different types of information. Consequently, a processing activity should be effective to the extent that it encourages processing of the type of information that is not sufficiently invited by the stimulus material. Past tests of this framework were limited to one instance of a relational task and one instance of an individual-item task. The first experiment demonstrated that the framework applies to other tasks-ones that bear little surface relationship to previously used tasks. The second experiment showed that the mnemonic benefits of material appropriate processing activities persist over a one-week delay and indicated that relational processing may be especially beneficial for long-term retention. The third experiment examined the relation between degree of difficulty of a material appropriate task and memory. The results indicated that increases in difficulty beyond some moderate level have no, and possibly even negative, effects on memory. Taken together, the results support and clarify a material appropriate processing perspective. 0 1990 Academic P~CSS, 1~2.