Research Narrative & Downloadable Articles (scroll down)

In the following research narrative, I provide some additional background on my interests and recent accomplishments spanning the past 5 years. In all of my research, my goal is two-fold: (1) exploring fundamental cognitive processes related to learning with the purpose of adding to our theoretical understanding, and (2), where appropriate, applying this knowledge to improve education.

As a basic researcher in Cognitive Psychology, my discipline emphasizes the empirical study of mental processes that underpin learning (e.g., attention, memory, reading, and problem solving). My main area of research explores reading comprehension (how we understand and remember what we read). Reading is arguably one of the most complex cognitive tasks in which we engage on a daily basis and is a critical skill to develop in students. Over the past 5 years I have authored 17 refereed journal articles or invited book chapters (many examining some element related to comprehension).

Another area of my research explores the application of working memory in problem solving (i.e., our ability to focus attention while ignoring irrelevant distracters). In 2009, I helped secure $805,158 in NSF STEM grant funding (as Co-Pi) to examine working memory in engineering students. This grant fits well with my goal of applying cognitive research to help improve education. The project specifically examines how students solve open-ended materials engineering problems.

Additionally, with my colleagues in 2011 (Lombardino, Farrar, and Linderholm), we garnered a University of Florida Research Opportunity grant (totaling $83,000) for the purposes of developing a kindergarten-level reading disabilities screening battery (i.e., the Kindergarten Cognitive and Reading Assessment Tool for iPad [K-CRATI]). The ultimate purpose of the K-CRATI is to provide educators with a tool that can effectively catch at-risk students early in their elementary schooling.

Looking back on my past five years of research activity, it has been a very busy period. I take great joy in all the steps of the research process (i.e., brainstorming an idea and seeing it take shape, designing a study, analyzing the data, crafting the journal article, and following the work’s potential influence in the field). If you are interested in some of my work, please find below links to downloadable articles. If you are interested in collaborating on some of these topics please feel free to email me at therriault@coe.ufl.edu

Respectfully Submitted,

David Therriault

Selected Articles

(All are in PDF file format. These articles may not be used for public distribution in any way that violates copyright laws.)

Lee, C. S., McNeill, N. J., Douglas, E. P, Koro-Ljungberg, M. E., & Therriault, D. J. (2013). Indispensable Resource? A Phenomenological Study of Textbook Use in Engineering Problem Solving. Journal of Engineering Education 102(2), 269-288.

Franks, B. A., Therriault, D. J., Buhr, M. I., Chiang, E. S., Gonzalez, C. M., Kwon, H. K., Schelble, J. L., & Wang, X. (2013). Looking Back: Reasoning and Metacognition with Narrative Texts. Metacognition and Learning 8(2), 145-171.

Douglas, E. P., Koro-Ljungberg, M., McNeil, N. J., Malcolm, Z. T., & Therriault, D. J. (2012). Moving beyond formulas and fixations: Solving open-ended engineering problems. European Journal of Engineering Education 37 (6), 627-651.

Lee, C. S. & Therriault, D. J. (2013).The cognitive underpinnings of creative thought: A latent variable analysis exploring the roles of intelligence and working memory in associative, divergent, and convergent thinking processes. Intelligence 41(5), 306-320.

Linderholm, T., Wang, X., Therriault, D. J., & Zhao, Q. & Jakiel, L. (2012). The accuracy of metacomprehension judgments: The biasing effect of text order. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology 10(1), 111-128.

Schelble, J. L., & Therriault, D. J., & Miller, M. D. (2012). Classifying retrieval strategies as a function of working memory. Memory and Cognition 40(2), 218-230.

Therriault, D. J. (2011). On the future of object recognition: The contribution of color. In T. Phuong Cao (Ed.), Object Recognition. (pp. 3-14). Rijeka,Croatia: Intech

Chiang, E. S., Therriault, D. J., & Franks, B. A. (2010). Individual Differences in Relative Metacomprehension Accuracy: Variation Within and Across Task Manipulations. Metacognition and Learning 5(2), 121-135.

Therriault, D. J., Yaxley, R. H., & Zwaan, R. A. (2009). The role of color diagnosticity in object recognition and language comprehension. Cognitive Processing 10(4), 335-342.

Madden, C. J., & Therriault, D. J. (2009). Verb Aspect and Perceptual Simulations. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 62 (7), 1294-1302.

Linderholm, T., Zhao, Q., Therriault, D.J., & Cordell-McNulty, K. (2008). Metacomprehension effects situated within an anchoring and adjustment framework. Metacognition and Learning 3 (3), 1556-2623.

Therriault, D. J., & Rinck, M. (2007). Multidimensional situation models. In F. Schmalhofer & C.A. Perfetti (Eds.), Higher level language processes in the brain: Inference and comprehension processes. (pp. 311-327) Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Therriault, D. J., & Raney, G. E. (2007).  Processing and representing temporal information in narrative text. Discourse Processes 43(2), 173-200.

Therriault, D. J., Rinck, M., & Zwaan, R. A. (2006). Assessing the influence of dimensional focus during situation model construction. Memory and Cognition 34(1), 78-89.

Kaschak, M. P., Madden, C. J., Therriault, D. J., Yaxley, R. H., Aveyard, M., Blanchard, A., & Zwaan, R. A. (2005). Perception of Motion Affects Language Processing. Cognition, 94 (3), B79-B89.

Thiede, K. W., Anderson, M. C. M., & Therriault, D. (2003). Accuracy of metacognitive monitoring affects learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95(1), 66-73.

Therriault, D. J. & Raney, G. E. (2002). The representation and comprehension of place-on-the-page and text-sequence memory.  Scientific Studies of Reading, 6(2), 117-134.

Conway, A. R. A., Cowan, N., Bunting, M. F., Therriault, D. J., & Minkoff, S. R. B. (2002). A latent variable analysis of working memory capacity, short-term memory capacity, processing speed, and general fluid intelligence. Intelligence, 30(2), 163-184.

Valenta, A. L., Therriault, D. J., Dieter, M. & Mrtek, R. (2001). Identifying student attitudes and learning styles in distance education. Journal of Asynchronous Learning, 5(2), 111-127.

Raney, G. E., Therriault, D. J. & Minkoff, S. R. B. (2000). Repetition effects from paraphrased text: Evidence for an integrated representation model of text representation. Discourse Processes, 29, 61-81.

*NOTE: These articles may not be used for public distribution in any way that violates copyright laws.