Kathryn McCarthy
Assistant Professor - Educational Psychology Learning Sciences- Education
Ph.D. Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2016
M.A. Psychology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2012
B.A. Psychology, Theatre Arts, Augustana College, 2009
- Specializations
Reading comprehension
Applied Cognition
Discipline-specific literacy
- Biography
Kathryn McCarthy is an assistant professor in the Department of Learning Sciences. Prior to joining the faculty, she was a postdoctoral scholar in the Science of Learning and Educational Technology lab at Arizona State University.
Her research explores the higher-order processes involved in reading comprehension and how these processes vary as a function of discipline and readers’ individual differences. She also examines how both in-person interventions and educational technology can be leveraged to support successful learning from text.
- Publications
McCarthy, K. S. (2015). “Reading beyond the lines: A critical review of cognitive approaches to literary interpretation and comprehension.” Scientific Study of Literature, 5, 99- 128. https://doi.org/10.1075/ssol.5.1.05mcc
McCarthy, K. S. (2020). “Examining students’ knowledge of disciplinary reading goals and strategies.” In Proceedings of the International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS). Nashville, TN.
McCarthy, K. S. and Goldman, S. R. (2019). “Constructing interpretive inferences about literary text: The role of domain-specific knowledge.” Learning and Instruction, 60, 245-251. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2017.12.004
McCarthy, K. S., Guerrero, T. G., Kent, K., Allen, L. K., McNamara, D. S., Chao, S., Steinberg, J., O’Reilly, T., and Sabatini, J. (2018). “Comprehension in a scenario-based assessment: Domain and topic-specific background knowledge.” Discourse Processes, 55, 510-524. https://doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2018.1460159
McCarthy, K. S., Kopp, K. J., Allen, L. K., and McNamara, D. S. (2018). “Methods of studying text: Memory, comprehension, and learning.” In H. Otani and B. Schwartz (Eds.), Research Methods in Human Memory (pp. 104-124). Routledge.
McCarthy, K. S., Watanabe, M., and McNamara, D. S. (in press). “The Design Implementation Framework: Guiding principles for the redesign of a reading comprehension intelligent tutoring system.” In M. Schmidt, A. Tawfik, Y. Earnshaw, and I. Jahnke (Eds.) Learner and User Experience Research: An Introduction for the Field of Learning Design & Technology.
McNamara, D. S., Allen, L. K., McCarthy, K. S., and Balyan, R. (2018). “NLP: Getting Computers to Understand Discourse.” In K. Millis, D. Long, J. Magliano, and K. Wiemer, (Eds.) Deep comprehension: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches (pp. 224-236). Routledge.