Emily Boulton and Lauren Hayden present at 2014 NURD Symposium

Together with faculty mentor, Jennifer Stiegler-Balfour, Ph.D, assistant professor of psychology, Emily Boulton (Psychology ‘16) and Lauren Hayden (Psychology ‘16) presented a poster titled “How Subtle Changes in Text Can Alleviate Deficits in Less-Skilled Readers” at the 2014 Northeast Undergraduate Research and Development (NURD) conference.

In their presentation, Boulton and Hayden outlined how adding a reinstatement sentence after unrelated text can affect reading comprehension. Participants in this study read text that introduced a protagonist who was either moderately or highly motivated to accomplish a goal. Reaction times were taken on target sentences which were consistent or inconsistent with the goals stated earlier.

The results revealed that under high motivation of the protagonist to complete a goal, adding a reinstatement sentence allowed less-skilled readers to demonstrate the same pattern of comprehension as skilled readers. The findings were discussed within the context of basic cognitive processes that underlie successful reading comprehension.