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Browsing by Author "Black, Sheila R"

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    A Metacomprehension Study: the Influence of Monitoring and Control on Text Comprehension
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2024) Brasfield, Mikenzi; Black, Sheila R; McDonough, Ian M
    Students may regulate their learning through monitoring and control. One measure of monitoring is relative metacomprehension accuracy. Low relative accuracy may negatively impact control. For example, students may show poor prioritization of material for restudy. Even if learners select appropriate material, they might employ suboptimal study strategies. In either case, students’ academic performance may suffer. I conducted Experiment 1 to test the influence of a situation model intervention (i.e., matching test expectancies) on relative accuracy, text selection, and text comprehension. I expected a serial mediation model to emerge from the data. I conducted Experiment 2 to examine the relationships between relative accuracy, text selection, and comprehension. Study strategy—rereading or self-explaining—was expected to interact with text selection to impact comprehension. I predicted that a conditional process model would emerge from the data. In Experiment 1, I divided participants into either a memory (n = 66) or comprehension (n = 65) test expectancy group. Participants read five texts and provided a monitoring judgment for each text. Then, they selected texts for restudy. Participants indicated the order in which they preferred to study the texts. Later, they completed a pre-test, a restudy phase, and a post-test. Participants were instructed to study/restudy by reading only. I modified this procedure for Experiment 2. All participants expected to take a comprehension test. However, one group (n = 40) was asked to restudy by rereading only. The other group was instructed to restudy by self-explaining the texts (n = 39). The proposed serial mediation and conditional process models were not supported. However, both experiments demonstrated that relative accuracy influences test performance. Additionally, Experiment 1 showed that relative accuracy affects text selection in accordance with a discrepancy reduction model. These findings highlight the need to explore the efficacy of situation model interventions as well as the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between relative accuracy and academic performance. Based on the results, I also encourage educators to frequently prompt students to monitor their understanding of to-be-learned material. Students may benefit from employing multiple situation model interventions while monitoring. Keywords: metacomprehension, relative accuracy, self-regulated learning
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    Risky Decision Making and Alzheimer's Disease Family History
    (University of Alabama Libraries, 2024) Cauble, Heaven; Black, Sheila R
    Alzheimer’s Disease is associated with a decline in multiple cognitive domains including executive function (EF). This decline in EF often results in a decline in decision-making capacity (DMC). It can affect daily functioning in every aspect of life and oftentimes has extreme consequences related to healthcare and financial decisions. However, unlike other impairments of AD (e.g., memory and executive function), DMC has not been extensively researched as an early symptom. By studying people who are genetically at-risk of developing AD via family, we may be able to detect early differences in DMC as a possible result of genetic predisposition of AD. 60 middle-aged adults were recruited into groups based on family medical history of AD and completed the Game of Dice Task, a gambling task that measures risky decision-making. We found that family medical history of AD contributes to variances between scores, indicating that having an increased genetic predisposition to AD is associated with risky decision-making in mid-adulthood for those individuals. This research could support looking at decision-making capacity as a possible early symptom of AD, thus allowing for earlier intervention.