Cognitive conditions of an autonomously motivated reading

Abstract

The paper refers to a research field that tends to be ignored by the authors who claim the im-portance of reading as an experience that is valid from an existential point of view, especial-ly when people is poorly schooled and come from socially emarginated environment.
The results of cognitive research on reading comprehension that are significant for the edu-cational applications are summed up and their importance is underscored to predict compre-hension errors in which the reader is not aware of the processes that produced them and to define goals and methods of an educational approach effective in helping the reader avoid those errors. This approach is funded on the research field previously summed up and is described by especially referring to two ways by which the cognitive goal is conciliated with the concern for enhancing the reader’s motiva-tion. The first way consists of transforming a comprehension error into a problem solving situation with the reader actively searching the text for the solution. The second way consists of systematically applying C.Rogers’ “reflection response” to the instructor’s communication. The example that completes the definition of both ways is referred to a story from Calvino’s Marcovaldo. Finally the importance of indivi-dualization is underscored to assure an effecti-ve educational help for readers in difficulty and experimental checks are referred to which ha-ve shown that the individualization cost is lar-gely compensated by the outcome in terms of gain scores on standardized test of reading comprehension ability.