Johanna K. Kaakinen

In the field of empirical literary studies, research on social reading has increased in recent years and reading groups have been studied from various perspectives. We contribute to the field by applying narrative theory to reading group research and studying the potential of reading groups to enhance the narrative agency of the participants. Narrative agency refers to the ability to navigate narrative environments and to critically and creatively engage with culturally available narratives. Supporting this ability is crucial in contemporary culture as diverse cultural narratives shape our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. In our study, we have developed a reading group model that aims to enhance participants’ narrative agency. In this article, we compare two creative reading group models—metanarrative and basic—and their potential to cultivate narrative agency and its three dimensions: narrative awareness, narrative imagination, and narrative dialogicality. Our hypothesis was that metanarrative groups have particularly strong potential to strengthen narrative agency. Relying on qualitative and quantitative methods, we found that both reading group models enhanced the narrative agency of the participants (n = 30). In addition, the qualitative analysis suggests that the narrative agency of the participants strengthened more in the metanarrative than in the basic groups and narrative awareness was particularly strengthened in the metanarrative groups. Hence, the results indicate that the metanarrative groups have specific potential to cultivate reflection on cultural narratives in a meaningful manner, which encourages us to continue further developing the reading group model. The results also demonstrate that the framework of narrative agency provides rich analytical tools to explore reading group experiences.

Science capital, a collection of science‐related forms of capital, promotes access to and utilization of scientific information, which is integral in a time of flourishing anti‐science attitudes. Nonetheless, it is not yet known which individual‐level characteristics are associated with science capital. The present study links sociological concepts of science capital to the psychological study of individual differences by examining the role of cognitive sophistication in science capital. Participants ( n = 146) completed an online survey. To assess cognitive sophistication, we used measures associated with the motivation and/or disposition (i.e., need for cognition, actively open‐minded thinking and epistemic curiosity) and ability (i.e., understanding randomness and probability, susceptibility to representativeness and equiprobability heuristics, and performance in Raven's progressive matrices) to reason. These measures were used to predict two aspects of science capital, science self‐efficacy and science attitudes, with regression analyses. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that epistemic curiosity was associated with both aspects of science capital, while need for cognition and understanding probabilistic concepts predicted science self‐efficacy, and susceptibility to the equiprobability heuristic predicted science attitudes. Additionally, education predicted both science self‐efficacy and science attitudes. Taken together, the study indicates that both motivation or disposition and ability to reason are important for science capital. Moreover, the study demonstrates the value of linking sociological and psychological perspectives together to better understand what makes people pro‐science.

Recognizing trustworthy scientific information is crucial in the current information era, and having sufficient resources to interact with and make use of scientific information is more important than ever. Because information is often presented numerically, informed decision-making requires numeracy skills such as probabilistic reasoning – understanding randomness and probability. The present study examined whether different dimensions of science capital (engagement in science-related activities, self-efficacy, early encouragement to science, and science attitudes) are associated with probabilistic reasoning measured as performance in a randomness task and tasks measuring representativeness and equiprobability heuristics. The results showed that engagement in science-related activities was related to reduced use of the representativeness heuristic and higher accuracy on randomness when controlling for age, gender, and education level. Interestingly, the use of equiprobability heuristic increased with science-related activities but decreased with early encouragement to science. We suggest that in adults, an accessible and encouraging science environment may be positively related to probabilistic reasoning.

We examined the familiarity and popularity of epistemically suspect COVID‐19 claims and their associations with cognitive, social, and demographic factors in a sample of people living in Finland ( N = 1077) during the pandemic (September 2021–January 2022). Endorsement of these claims was associated with pseudoscientific beliefs, less actively open‐minded thinking, and preference for anecdotal information. Among social factors, lower trust in governmental institutions, science, and scientists, and reliance on alternative media were linked to higher endorsement. Regarding demographic variables, higher education was associated with lower endorsement, though this effect was fully mediated by cognitive and social factors. Men endorsed epistemically suspect COVID‐19 claims more than women, and endorsement decreased with age. These findings highlight the importance of education in fostering critical thinking skills and trust in institutions and science to effectively combat health‐related misinformation.

The aim of the current paper is to offer a unique perspective on eye movement analysis in reading research by applying techniques from social network analysis to examine integration processes between sentences during reading. In a first step, we explored how network measures relate to the often-used duration measures in reading research in order to examine whether there is an additional value in using network measures. In a second step, we further explored how differences in network measures are related to text (i.e., topic structure) and reader characteristics (i.e., WMC). Thirty-one participants read three short expository texts. Four network measures at the sentence level were calculated for the three texts: strength, betweenness centrality, harmonic centrality, and local clustering coefficient. Correlations were computed between first-pass reading time and second-pass reading time and the network measures. Network measures were analyzed with (generalized) linear mixed-effects models. The results show that strength is strongly correlated to second-pass reading time. Betweenness, harmonic centrality, and the local clustering coefficient are not related to these often-used duration measures and thus capture aspects of integration processes that cannot be captured with duration measures. The results demonstrated that strength and betweenness centrality are related to reader’s WMC. It was also shown that strength, harmonic centrality, and local clustering coefficient were related to the topic structure of the text. This study demonstrates that a social network approach offers a novel perspective on moment-to-moment integration processes during reading.

This study examined science capital among Finnish adults ( N = 1572), who responded to 37 survey items assessing science capital. Factor analysis suggested four science capital dimensions: visiting science-related places, science attitudes, science-related self-efficacy, and early support for studying natural sciences. Higher education and higher parental education were linked to higher science capital across all dimensions. Older participants exhibited lower science-related self-efficacy, less early support, and more negative science attitudes than younger respondents. Age and education were stronger predictors of science-related self-efficacy and early encouragement for men than women, and mothers’ education had a weaker effect on science-related self-efficacy for men. The results show that science capital is a multidimensional construct and highlights that younger generations in Finland have had more opportunities to develop their science capital. These findings emphasize the need for early and equitable support to foster positive science attitudes and participation.

We investigated the impact of situational awe on topic-specific interest and recognition memory for information presented in immersive planetarium films. Adult participants (N = 131) were recruited among science centre visitors who were going to view one of the films shown in the science centre's planetarium. Participants responded to questions about prior knowledge, topic-specific interest in the film and background information before viewing one of the three planetarium films. After the film, they completed the topic-specific interest scale, epistemically-related emotion scales, situation-specific awe scale, critical thinking disposition scale and a recognition task of the film contents. The results showed that during viewing planetarium films participants experienced awe, but the strength of this emotion varied among films. Additionally, situation-specific awe was strongly associated with another epistemic emotion, namely surprise. As for the recognition task performance, awe decreased error and nonsense detection, and increased false recognition of inferential statements. Finally, awe was found to substantially increase topic-specific interest. These results present evidence that awe has potential to prompt individuals to become more interested in science-related topics.

In our current era, learners are confronted with many and varying sources of information, such as news media, books, websites, social media, scientific articles, communicative interactions, and more. In addition, individuals must learn from such sources, making it important to critically examine the factors underlying learning from text and discourse. Importantly, the valence and activation of readers’ emotions can influence the quality of readers’ processing, which could help or hinder the learner’s ability to understand and learn from text related to important issues. Although theoretical and empirical work documents the role of emotions in learning and motivation, reading- and discourse-specific models are needed. At present, the literature examining reading presents conflicting findings related to the influence of emotion on textual processing. However, asproposed in the Process, Emotion, Task (PET) framework, the discrepant findings related to reading processes may be explained by interactions between specific reader emotions and the type of task. Hence, examining both emotions and features of the text are critical when considering how to support readers’ ability to comprehend, evaluate, and learn from text. This article introduces a special issue of Discourse Processes that brings together experts engaging in empirical studies on how emotion influences learning and processing for varying text types in different contexts. Our goal is to further work toward developing a more cohesive understanding of the influence of reader emotions in supporting learning, comprehension, processing, and conceptual change and to draw important connections to the broader fields of text and discourse, learning, and motivation. Such connections are critical for improving learning experiences across a variety of settings and enhancing the relevance of discourse-processing research.

Previous research has shown that word length, frequency and word repetition influence word reading times (Rayner 1998; 2009). Guidelines for Easy Language advise writers to use frequent and short words, and to repeat words instead of using synonyms. However, some of these guidelines are based on research that has been misinterpreted, simplified, or is outdated (Wengelin 2015), and studies focusing on effects of word length, frequency and word repetition among adult readers in the Easy Swedish target group are lacking. This eye-tracking study investigated the reading of Easy Language texts written by public authorities, as well as the effects of word length, frequency, and word repetition on readers in a day centre for people with intellectual disabilities. The results showed significant effects for word length and frequency in all readers. In addition, the effects were significantly greater in the target group than in the control group. The effects for word repetition were not as clear, affecting only one of the reading measures. Furthermore, the study revealed poor comprehension rates in the target group, i.e., when asked, they were not able to reproduce the main contents of the texts. The significantly greater effects of word length and frequency suggest that the related Easy Language guidelines are valid for this group of readers. The poor comprehension rates indicate that the texts were too difficult for these readers.