We investigated how adult readers evaluate and revise their situation model, by monitoring their eye movements as they read narrative texts and critical sentences. In each text, a short introduction primed an inference, followed by a concept that was either expected (e.g. “oven”) or unexpected (e.g. “grill”). Eye movements showed that readers detected a mismatch between the unexpected information and their prior interpretation, confirming their ability to evaluate inferential information. Subsequently, a critical sentence included a word that was either congruent (e.g. “roasted”) or incongruent (e.g. “barbecued”) with the expected but not the unexpected concept. Readers spent less time reading the congruent than the incongruent word, reflecting the facilitation of prior information. In addition, when the unexpected concept had been presented, participants with lower verbal (but not visuospatial) working memory span exhibited longer reading times and made more regressions on encountering congruent information, indicating difficulty in revising their situation model.

Individual reports of language history, use, and proficiency are generally considered sufficient for language profiling. Yet, these variables alone neglect the contribution of contextual linguistic diversity to one’s overall language repertoire. In this study we used the Contextual Linguistic Profile Questionnaire to evaluate whether there is a difference in contextual linguistic diversity between participants across the linguistically dissimilar contexts of South Africa and England. We further assessed whether self-reported lingualism status groups (monolinguals, bilinguals, multilinguals) scored differently on contextual linguistic diversity to evaluate the utility and uniformity of categorical labels across varying contexts, and investigated how codeswitching and socio-economic status contributed to these effects. Our results demonstrated that contextual linguistic diversity differs between nations: South Africans score higher, promotion of multilingualism is dependent on socio-economic status only in England, lingualism status is not contextually comparable when measured categorically, and codeswitching accounts for linguistic features of South Africans.

Learning a new language is an important goal that many individuals find difficult to achieve, particularly during adulthood. Several factors have related this variability to different extrinsic (learning condition, difficulty of the materials) and intrinsic (cognitive abilities) factors, but the interaction between them is barely known. In two experiments, participants learned English grammar rules in intentional (Experiment 1) or explicit (Experiment 2), and incidental learning-contexts. Overall, results of this study indicated that intentional-explicit conditions benefitted rule-learning, as compared to incidental conditions. This benefit was mainly present when participants were learning an easy-rule; explicit and incidental learning did not differ in the case of participants learning a difficult rule (Experiment 2). Moreover, individual differences in executive functioning predicted successful learning in interaction with difficulty. When learning an easy-rule, proactive control facilitated intentional learning. In contrast, when participants were learning a complex-rule, incidental learning was enhanced by lower involvement of proactive control.

Text comprehension frequently demands the resolution of no longer plausible interpretations to build an accurate situation model, an ability that might be especially challenging during second language comprehension. Twenty-two native English speakers (L1) and twenty-two highly proficient non-native English speakers (L2) were presented with short narratives in English. Each text required the evaluation and revision of an initial prediction. Eye movements in the text and a comprehension sentence indicated less efficient performance in the L2 than in L1 comprehension, in both inferential evaluation and revision. Interestingly, these effects were determined by individual differences in inhibitory control and linguistic proficiency. Higher inhibitory control reduced the time rereading previous parts of the text (better evaluation) as well as revisiting the text before answering the sentence (better revision) in L2 comprehenders, whereas higher proficiency reduced the time in the sentence when the story was coherent, suggesting better general comprehension in both languages.

With the purpose of promoting academic inclusion, it is essential for educators to understand the nature underlying poor reading comprehension in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this study, we examined the time course of anaphor resolution during text comprehension in children and adolescents with ASD and a group of children with Typical Development (TD) matched in chronological age (age range: 9–16) and non-verbal IQ. Their eye movements were monitored as they read short paragraphs in which two factors were manipulated: (1) the semantic typicality of an antecedent (e.g. shark vs. salmon) with regards to a category noun that serves as anaphor (e.g. fish) and (2) the distance between the antecedent and anaphor (e.g. near vs. far). Both, children with ASD and TD showed more and longer first fixations in the near anaphors than in the far anaphors but not in the post-anaphor region which suggests that the effect of distance on anaphor resolution was immediate. The reverse effect of distance indicated that the far condition was too demanding for students of these ages to occur online. Typical antecedents received fewer and shorter revisits than atypical antecedents but only for participants with TD. In contrast, ASD participants did not show such typicality facilitation. Finally, children with ASD made more but shorter fixations and revisits in general than their typical peers. Theoretical and applied implications of our results for the literacy training on ASD participants are discussed.