Children's ability to adjust their standards for evaluating comprehension.

Abstract

Children 8 and 10 years of age listened to essays that contained either false statements or inconsistencies. They were asked to indicate which essays had problems with them. One group of children was simply informed that some of the essays contained problems. A second group of children was additionally told that some of the statements would be false and was given examples of falsehoods. A third group was told instead that some of the essays would be inconsistent and was given examples of inconsistencies. Under neutral instructions, the rate of problem detection was quite low for both age groups. Specific instructions helped children find problems. Moreover, the relative order of difficulty in finding falsehoods and inconsistencies shifted depending on the instructional set, suggesting that the instructions enabled children to adjust their standard of evaluation.

Memory Development Between 2 and 20

“…In particular, they were told that passages that contained Contradietory sentences are passages that do not make sense. This "appropriate standard of comparison" control condition was similar to the condition in which Markman's subjects detected the most inconsistencies (Markman & Gorin, 1981). In general, performances in comparison conditions were high relative to the control conditions, with error detection in the local + wholistic cell particularly striking and significantly better than in any ofthe controls.ln short, it proved possible to improve comprehension monitaring by teaching processes that are critical to monitaring but not performed spontaneously by children.…”

Fostering Comprehension Monitoring in below Average Readers through Self-Instruction Training

“…Fifteen passages were used in the study, most of which were adapted from elementary science and reading texts (e.g., Barnell Loft series) or from earlier studies (Markman, 1979;Markman & Gorin, 1981;Schmidt & Paris, 1983;Schmidt, Schmidt, & Tomalis, 1984). All of the passages contained an average of 86 words, were either nine or 10 sentences in length and were written below the fourth-grade reading level as determined by the Fry Readability procedure (Fry, 1968).…”

The Influence of Self-Instruction on the Comprehension Monitoring Performance of Average and above Average Readers

“…The results of several recent remediation attempts have shown that the acquisition of metacognitive skills such as comprehension monitoring can be facilitated with minimal external prompts in older normal readers (Markman & Gorin, 1981). However, such interventions have not consistently improved the monitoring performances of younger or less successful learners (Baker, 1985;Garner & Taylor, 1982;Markman, 1979).…”

“…A considerable amount of evidence exists that immature and less skillful learners seldom engage in spontaneous comprehension monitoring during listening and reading tasks (Garner, 1981;Garner & Reis, 1981;Markman, 1978Markman, , 1979Markman & Gorin, 1981). This tendency to adopt a passive role in the learning process has been hypothesized to directly contribute to deficient academic performances.…”