Welcome to the Big League: Construction Integration and Memory

A key aspect of academic success in education reading comprehension (Pearson & Gallagher, 1983).  Reading comprehension is a key factor in students’ academic, achievement, engagement, and persistence (Linnenbrink & Pintrich, 2003; Pintrich & De Groot, 1990).  Therefore, helping readers acquire comprehension skills that will will increase learning is most significant.  As a college reading instructor, a goal of mine is to help facilitate a suitable match between students’ reading beliefs, text comprehension, and strategy transfer.  

My main objective is to help support students with self-belief and reading strategies transfer across college disciplines (i.e., Social Sciences, Humanities, and Life Sciences).  High-intensity (i.e., expert) reading students utilize deliberate reading objectives, deep-processing reading strategies, and persist at task longer (Alexander, 2005).  These readers during the reading process create inferences, predictions, and questions (Mokhtari & Reichard, 2002).  Also, these students use metacognitive skills to monitor comprehension during, and after reading completion (2002).    

On the other hand, low-intensity (i.e., non-experts) readers may lack metacomprehension and self-regulation skills (2002).  So, their ability to regulate cognition and reading comprehension is often not applicable. Conversely, these students may mistake the main details in text and concentrate on unimportant meanings.  Nonetheless, the difference between these two groups is not reading cognitive aptitude (in most cases) but effective strategies and their application.  In other words, some students don’t possess the skills (yet) to call the right plays (i.e., reading strategies), in different situations (i.e., history, psychology, biology).       

Text Processing the CI Way

In our chapter reading (Alvermann, Unrau, & Ruddell, 2013), we had to read and investigate another reading comprehension model, Construction-Integration (CI) Kintsch, (1988).  The gist of the model suggests text H processing occurs along two stages.  The first stage is construction (i.e., concepts, syntax, and semantic) that connect a network of activated concepts.  Continuing, the activation process either strengthens or diminishes links not compatible with the network units or conceptions.  In other words, the weak links are destroyed and stronger ones move up the evolutionary (memory) ladder. 

Ultimately, the second stage (i.e., integration) develops mental representations or as I refer to as, a contextual text screen shot. Jumping way ahead, in short, I’m most interested in the situation model…it is a screen shot of the situations in the academic text (i.e., thesis statement, headers, and graphs).  This all is the result of combining the textbase with the reader’s prior knowledge and experience.  As a result, a strong situation models are theorized to contribute to students’ text learning. I’m not sure if learning is synonymous with comprehension at this point.   Time out. 

2 Minute Warning

I am a college reading instructor because I want to help students learn to implement reading and study comprehension strategies.  So, I want to zero in on the (CI) model for a sec.  I am concern with how memories are constructed in students’ minds and consciousness.  It is not uncommon to hear instructors and theorists discuss prior knowledge or often times referred to as schema, as a file cabinet, (I was guilty of this until Dr. Mandringo hit me up).  

However, back to the lesson at hand, there is a need for a deeper discussion on memory storage and its retrieval cues.  I am reading a book for another class assignment (i.e., Moonwalking with Einstein:  the Art and Science of Remembering Everything, (Foer, 2011).  The author discusses principles for stronger memory capacity and knowledge retrieval strategies.  He points our new memories and experiences become attached to our old memories and experiences.  Then our schemata or mental representations must be organized and stored with a particular distinct pattern or in a social context.  Our memoires stored in this pattern become retrievable (i.e., prior knowledge) to both high and low intensity readers (2011).       

In short, new knowledge and experiences are easier to recall for knowledge and text action if stored inside a social context.  For example, a low-intensity reader who attaches memories to a social context (birthday party) can use memory strategies to retrieve this knowledge. Foer points out, “We don’t remember in isolated facts, we remember things in context” (Foer, p.65).  Conversely, knowledge stored in bits and pieces often becomes obsolete due without connectional cues (social context) with new knowledge. Therefore, new experiences stored in social contexts will help ‘meaningful’ prior knowledge influence new learning and comprehension.

Alexander, P. A. (2005). The path to competence: A lifespan developmental perspective on reading. Journal of Literacy Research, 37(4), 413.

Alvermann, D. E., Unrau, N. J., & Ruddell, R. B. (2013). Theoretical models and processes of reading (Vol. 978).

Foer, J. (2011). Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything. Penguin.

Kintsch, W. (1988). The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: a construction-integration model. Psychological Review, 95(2), 163.

Linnenbrink, E. A., & Pintrich, P. R. (2003). THE ROLE OF SELF-EFFICACY BELIEFS INSTUDENT ENGAGEMENT AND LEARNING INTHECLASSROOM. Reading &Writing Quarterly, 19(2), 119–137.

Mokhtari, K., & Reichard, C. A. (2002). Assessing students’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. Journal of Educational Psychology, 94(2), 249.

Pearson, P. D., & Gallagher, M. C. (1983). The instruction of reading comprehension. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 8(3), 317–344.

Pintrich, P. R., & De Groot, E. V. (1990). Motivational and self-regulated learning components of classroom academic performance. Journal of Educational Psychology, 82(1), 33.