ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a review of research that examined how scientists read scientific articles by having the scientists verbalize their thought processes while reading. It suggests that functional scientific literacy can be enhanced through greater contact with the practice of scientists. The think-aloud studies of scientists reading scientific articles revealed practices, such as non-linear reading, that were not obvious from the content and structure of the scientific articles themselves. While texts are written to present flowing, linear, representation, reading and deep comprehension may require violating this structure and moving back and forth between sections of the text, as well as constructing mental representations that augment the literal information in the text. The structure of scientific articles, as well as scientists' knowledge of scientific principles and of how to produce and evaluate scientific claims, mediate scientists' reading processes. The chapter discusses whether and how the reading practices that scientists have been found to employ can infuse laypeople's multiple scientific source use.
