Metacognitive and cognitive abilities in reading comprehension among Russian upper secondary and undergraduate students: Explanations from different points of view

Abstract

The study was aimed at identifying the characteristics of upper secondary and undergraduate students’ ability to learn when working with explanatory learning texts, depending on the level of their logical thinking. The experiment involved 669 third- and fourth-year university students (future philologists [n = 351], teachers [n = 90], psychologists [n = 96], and soil scientists [n = 132]) and 121 upper secondary students. We used two methods to identify spontaneous strategies for understanding the text: 1) “Select the main sentences” (Mal’skaya & Sidel’nikova, 1984); and 2) “Search for contradictions” (Korotaeva, 2000). We also diagnosed logical thinking, using the following methods: 1) tasks for equalizing variables in the process of confirming and testing hypotheses; 2) “the plant problem” (Kuhn & Brannock, 1977) and 3) the Badelly reasoning test. Our sample showed that understanding of the text is significantly related to the level at which the subject forms logical operations. There was a weak positive correlation between the ability to highlight the main thing and the ability to detect contradictions in the text. The ability to highlight the main thing was significantly and positively associated with the formation of certain logical operations. The study also revealed differences in the quality of work with the text and the mastery of logical techniques between students of different specialties, with the lowest results observed in students of pedagogical specialties. The university students’ ability to highlight the main sentences was also compared with that of high school students (Grade 10, mean age 17.3). The results are discussed from two different theoretical standpoints: the Cognitive approach and the Cultural-Historical Activity approach.