Psycholinguistic Studies of Literacy

Abstract Our understandings of literacy experiences, with respect to both successes and challenges, have been usefully informed by psycholinguistic research. The current entry presents the utility of such approaches by highlighting work specifically examining the processes and products underlying reading experiences. We briefly review the ways in which goals and tasks guide reader attention to and memory for text, the types of inferences that readers construct to support their understandings, and the evaluative propensities readers adopt or may neglect to enact. Findings from this work provide important theoretical insights relevant to a host of models and accounts but importantly inform applications intended to support people's literacy practices.