Danielle S. McNamara (Ph.D. 1992, University of Colorado, Boulder) joined the Cognitive Psychology Program at the University of Memphis in August, 2002. As a cognitive scientist, a great deal of her work involves the theoretical study of cognitive processes as well as the application of cognitive principles to educational practice. The majority of her current research concerns text comprehension. One focus of that research (funded by NSF IERI ) examines effects of students' reading strategies on science course performance. The overarching goal of the IERI project is to develop methods to improve students' use of reading strategies. To that end, she and her research team have developed an automated reading strategy tutor called iSTART, which teaches students to more actively process science text. A second focus of her reading research is on text cohesion and how that interacts with reader aptitudes. A current project (funded by IES) examines effects of text coherence and is working to create automated measures of text difficulty (called Coh-Metrix). She also studies a variety of phenomena related to comprehension skill, working memory, ATC to pilot communication, expertise, knowledge acquisition, and the generation effect.
Click here to get a more detailed research statement of Dr. McNamara.
Funding
EXTERNAL (Funded or Pending. List funded support first) |
AGENCY/SOURCE |
AMOUNT |
PERIOD |
McNamara, D.S. (PI) |
J. S. McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Studies for Educational Practice Postdoctoral Fellowship Award |
$59,400 |
1993-1995 |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI) |
J. S. McDonnell Foundation Cognitive Studies for Educational Practice Career Development Award |
$150,000 |
1996-1999 |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI) |
NASA-Ames |
$10,000 |
1999 |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI), Morgan, R., & Levinstein, I. |
National Science Foundation IERI |
$3,196,000 |
2000-2005 |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI), Scerbo, M, & Baldwin, C |
NASA-Ames |
$365,000 |
2001-2004 |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI), Louwerse, M., & Graesser, A. |
Office of Educational Research & Improvement |
$1,425,200 |
2002-2005 |
| INTERNAL |
SOURCE |
AMOUNT |
PERIOD |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI) |
College of Sciences, Old Dominion University |
$6,000 |
1998-1999 |
| McNamara, D.S. (PI) |
Old Dominion University |
$9,000 |
1999-2000 |
Current Projects
Promoting active reading strategies to improve students' understanding
of science.
click here to read the project
proposal
The problem addressed by this five-year project regards high-school students'
understanding of and ability to learn from difficult science texts. The
first purpose of this project is to examine high school students’
and teachers’ knowledge about metacognitive reading strategies to
better ascertain the need for strategy interventions. The second purpose
is to compare the effectiveness of three reading interventions and to
thereby identify more effective methods for improving students’
comprehension skills. The third purpose is to determine whether the benefits
of reading interventions depend on students’ skills, knowledge,
or cultural environment. The fourth purpose is to develop a computerized
training program (iSTART) that adaptively assigns a student to an appropriate
training regime, and interactively provides reading training. Hence, this
project bridges the two focus areas of the IERI initiative concerning
reading skill acquisition and students’ understanding of increasingly
complex scientific ideas. Within these areas, this project addresses issues
regarding instructional practices in reading, the role of teacher learning
and performance on student learning, optimal interventions for students
at-risk of reading or academic failure, the development of better assessment
techniques of knowledge and skill, and the use of technology to improve
assessment and learning.
click here
to go to the project website
Snow, C. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. [PDF]
Coh-Metrix: Automated Cohesion and Coherence Scores to Predict Text Readability
and Facilitate Comprehension.
click here to read the project
proposal
Text cohesion is a driving factor of comprehension. Text characteristics
critically interact with readers’ abilities. By using advanced computational
linguistic tools thoroughly tested in experimental research, this project
provides the latest in experimental psychology, computational linguistics,
education and computer science to measure and improve readability of texts.
Coh-Metrix is a computational cohesion and coherence metrics. It measures
text difficulty at various levels of language, discourse, and conceptual
analysis and adjusts the output according to the targeted reader. Often
readers of various ages have difficulties reading narrative and expository
texts because of a lack of cohesive devices in the text. These devices
include referential, spatial, temporal, causal cohesion, and structural
cues for the reader. Coh-Metrix suggests where cohesion is lacking for
a particular reader group.
Coh-GIT is a Cohesion Gap Identification Tool that identifies the specific
locations and types of cohesion gaps in text. Our second goal is to further
investigate effects of text cohesion.
click
here to go to the project website
Snow, C. (2002). Reading for understanding: Toward an R&D program in reading comprehension. Santa Monica, CA: RAND. [PDF]
Data-Link Aircraft Communications: An Examination of Interference, Coherence,
and Workload.
click here to
read the project proposal
Air traffic control (ATC) messages have been typically presented in the
auditory modality via radio transmission. However, recent technology allows
textual messages to be sent via data link. Data link messages are displayed
on a small screen, which is situated at hip level in front of the pilot
flying (PF) and the pilot not flying (PNF). In an ideal scenario, the
message is read aloud by the PNF to the PF. The PF generally executes
the ATC requests. The PNF then sends a message to accept the ATC request
by pressing an accept button. This procedure contrasts with radio transmission
wherein both pilots hear the ATC message, and acceptance and execution
often take place simultaneously. Data link messages solve several problems
associated with radio transmission such as message clarity and radio frequency
congestion. Data link was also expected to reduce ATC errors and pilot
errors. This expectation has not been confirmed. Rather, errors have persisted,
though of a seemingly different nature than those associated with radio
transmission. Coupled with the additional down-load time, data link messages
also typically require 15 to 30 seconds longer to execute than does a
radio transmitted message. The purpose of this project is to investigate
fundamental differences between auditory and textual transmission of information
to better predict errors as a function of modality and to ultimately develop
a set of guidelines for data link transmission of ATC messages.
click
here to go to the project website