Hey everyone,
I'm planning to read short texts to healthy adult participants (could be a descriptive text, a narrative one, whatever...) and ask them simple comprehension questions . This is for a study in which I would purposefully give them positive or negative feedback after each comprehension question, in order to induce a state of confusion. Any idea where I could find texts and questions previously used on adult participants?
Thanks!
Lewis, M. R., & Mensink, M. C. (2012). Prereading questions and online text comprehension. Discourse Processes, 49(5), 367-390.
Peshkam, A., Mensink, M. C., Putnam, A. L., & Rapp, D. N. (2011). Warning readers to avoid irrelevant information: When being vague might be valuable. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 36(3), 219-231.
http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hdsp20#.VrTAc_krLmE
This should get you started. You will want to contact the researchers for the texts, if you wish.
You could use passages from any major academic achievement test, such as the WIAT-II, K-TEA-II, Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Battery, or PIAT. Decide on an appropriate grade level (based on your sample's expected educational background) and use the appropriate texts.
You might want to use the Discourse Comprehension Test (Brookshire & Nicholas, 1993). It contains several short narratives, each with yes/no questions to test comprehension for main ideas, details, stated information and implied information, and can be administered via listening or reading. It was standardized on adults with and without brain damage. Hope that helps.
Together with Kate Cain (also at Lancaster University) we have data on student performance on both forms of the ARC (from Simmons & Singleton, 2000). This is a 20 minute test, with a passage and 20 MCQ items, literal and inferential. We have data both on the original materials, and some modified text and question sets (because of potential issues with the original items) and we have data from some several hundred University students in total. I suggest you get in touch if you want more details of the materials and data we have on it.
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