Have you ever found it difficult to read something because you lack knowledge on the topic? We investigated this phenomenon with a sample of 3,534 high school students who took a background-knowledge test before working on a reading-comprehension test on the topic of ecology. Broken-line regression revealed a knowledge threshold: Below the threshold, the relationship between comprehension and knowledge was weak (β = 0.18), but above the threshold, a strong and positive relation emerged (β = 0.81). Further analyses indicated that certain topically relevant words (e.g., ecosystem, habitat) were more important to know than others when predicting the threshold, and these keywords could be identified using natural-language-processing techniques. Collectively, these results may help identify who is likely to have a problem comprehending information on a specific topic and, to some extent, what knowledge is likely required to comprehend information on that topic.

Cognitive training studies yield wildly inconsistent results. One dimension on which studies vary is the scheduling of training sessions (Morrison & Chein, 2011). In this study, we systematically address whether or not spacing of practice influences training and transfer. We randomly assigned 115 fifth grade children to an active control group or one of four training groups who received working memory training based on a “running span” task (Zhao et al., 2011). All groups received the same total amount of training: 20 sessions of training with 60 trials for an average of 20 minutes per session. The training was spread across 2 days, 5 days, 10 days, or 20 days. The active control group received 20-minute sessions of math instruction for 20 sessions. Before and after training participants in all five groups performed a single transfer test that assessed fluid intelligence, the Raven's Progressive Matrices Test. Overall, participants in all four training groups improved significantly on the training task (at least partially), as reflected by increased speed. More importantly, the only training group to show significant improvement on the Raven's was the group who had the greatest amount of spacing (20 days group) during training and improvement in this group was significantly higher than that of the control group.

The construct of reading comprehension has changed significantly in the twenty-first century; however, some test designs have not evolved sufficiently to capture these changes. Specifically, the nature of literacy sources and skills required has changed (wrought primarily by widespread use of digital technologies). Modern theories of comprehension and discourse processes have been developed to accommodate these changes, and the learning sciences have followed suit. These influences have significant implications for how we think about the development of comprehension proficiency across grades. In this paper, we describe a theoretically driven, developmentally sensitive assessment system based on a scenario-based assessment paradigm, and present evidence for its feasibility and psychometric soundness.