Comprehension, Collaboration and Creativity Lab
2068-75 Behavioral Sciences Building 
University of Illinois at Chicago
(312) 996-5591
Principal Investigator: Jennifer Wiley, PhD

We use a number of different methodologies to investigate the contexts that promote effective comprehension, learning, and problem solving. Many investigations take an individual differences approach looking at differences in thinking dispositions, prior knowledge, linguistic background, working memory capacity, or spatial ability, and their effects on performance via aptitude-by-treatment interactions.

Problem Solving, Collaboration and Creativity

Some topics include exploring the nature of Aha! experiences, which contexts promote more creative problem solving, when collaboration may lead to more innovation, when collaboration or invention activities may lead to more effective learning, and how variations in attentional states and individual differences in attentional control may affect analytic, creative and insightful problem solving.

Comprehension and Metacomprehension of Science Texts

What is metacomprehenion? What have we learned about supporting students in metacomprehenion skills? See a summary of our IES funded research on metacomprehension at https://jwiley.people.uic.edu/ies.html.

Grant-funded projects in collaboration with Dr. Thomas Griffin explore metacognitive processes such as comprehension monitoring; detection of ambiguity, anomaly or contradictions; how images and analogies may make readers overestimate their own understanding of text; and how we might improve students' comprehension and monitoring as they engage in learning from expository science texts. We also study how students construct understanding by generating inferences, integrating across multiple sources and representations, and how spatial ability and intellectual values affect learning in science.

Newest Publications

Hildenbrand, L., Sarmento, D., Griffin, T. D., & Wiley, J. (2023) Conceptual overlap among texts impedes comprehension monitoring. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02349-4

Guerrero, T. A., Griffin, T. D., & Wiley, J. (2023). The effects of generating examples on comprehension and metacomprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/xap0000490

Hildenbrand, L., & Wiley, J. (2023). Mental counters as an online tool for assessing working memory capacity. Behavior Research Methods. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-023-02180-8

Hildenbrand, L., & Wiley, J. (2023). Working memory capacity as a predictor of multiple text comprehension, Discourse Processes, 60(4-5), 378-396. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2023.2197690

Hildenbrand, L., Roberts, L., & Wiley, J. (2023). Testing the independent effects of refutations and summaries on understanding, Discourse Processes, 60(4-5), 320-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2023.2190278

George, T., Mielicki, M. K., & Wiley, J. (2023). Great expectations: Misleading effects of images in the alternate uses task. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 17(1), 56-67. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/aca0000380

Miller, T. S., Aamer, Z. K., & Wiley, J. (2023). Exploring restructuring and Aha! in the context of computer programming. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, 45. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6k57z26q