Abstract
The present research explored the awareness that readers have of the difficulty of negative text, and aimed to determine whether reading a passage twice could impact metacomprehension and comprehension of that text. Participants read expository passages that sometimes contained negative words such as “no” and “not”, rated their ability to comprehend what they just read, and answered a comprehension question. Half of the passages were read twice, and rated again before the participant was prompted to answer a comprehension question. Results showed that passages that were read twice were rated as easier to understand, and questions that corresponded with those passages were answered with higher accuracy as well. However, these improvements were not only for negated passages. While participants were aware that the negative passages were harder to comprehend, this understanding did not aid in heightened comprehension of the negative text.