Comprehension Monitoring in Preschool Children

Abstract

This study examined the ability of 2 1/2-4 1/2-years-olds to recognize comprehension difficulties and to implement strategies for resolving them. In the course of a play interaction, an adult female experimenter made a series of requests, some of which were designed to be difficult for the child to understand or to execute. Children's responses to these requests were compared with their responses to control requests that were easy to comprehend and comply with 3-year-olds exhibited appropriate and selective monitoring responses for some kinds of problems but not others, while 4-year-olds displayed discriminative monitoring for all types of problems presented. In contrast to previous experimental findings, these results indicate that young children are capable of detecting a variety of comprehension problems and possess appropriate strategies for resolving these difficulties with a partner in communication.

Emergent Readers’ Social Interaction Styles and Their Comprehension Processes During Buddy Reading

“…However, they did expand children's comprehension monitoring repertoires in ways that collaborative reading does not (i.e., sets purposes, rereads, and repeats). While previous research showed that social interactions facilitated emergent readers' engagement with comprehension monitoring (Christ et al, 2013;Gallagher, 1981;Garvey, 1977;Revelle et al, 1985), this study shows that social interaction styles differentially support specific comprehension monitoring practices.…”

“…Second, scaffolds provided by adults help children engage with text representation, interpretation, and comprehension monitoring. Research provides evidence that (a) adults' open ended prompts and questions were related to children's engagement with representing literal information in the text (Barachetti & Lavelli, 2010;Kang et al, 2009;Kim, Kang, & Pan, 2011) and (b) adults' questions to get children to clarify information in the story facilitate their engagement in comprehension monitoring (Gallagher, 1981;Garvey, 1977;Revelle, Wellman, & Karabenick, 1985). Third, related to the importance of modeling and scaffolding during read-alouds, research shows that an interactive style of adult-child reading, such as using questioning, affirming, and extending children's responses to text during reading, supports emergent literacy development (Anderson-Yockel & Haynes, 1994;Hart & Risely, 1995;Heath, 1982;McNoughton, 1995;Reese et al, 2003;Rodriguez et al, 2009).…”

Facilitating the Communicative Competence of the Child Witness

“…Laboratory studies suggest that preschoolers can recognize comprehension difficulties and implement strategies for resolving them; however, they are best able to do so in naturalistic settings when tasks and stimuli are simple, familiar, and require nonverbal responses to physically present referents (e.g., Revelle, Wellman, & Karabenick, 1985). In contrast, in studies where settings, tasks, and stimuli tend to be complex, verbal, and unfamiliar, young children have difficulty detecting message adequacy, may not know when they have failed to understand a message, and rarely question ambiguous messages or request clarification from adults (Asher, 1976;Ironsmith & Whitehurst, 1978;Markman, 1977Markman, , 1979Patterson, Massad, & Cosgrove, 1978).…”

Children’s sensitivity to circular explanations

“…Even preschoolers can perform well on some tasks (Revelle, Wellman, & Karabenick, 1985), whereas adults will miss inconsistencies and other problems in longer and more complex bodies of text (Graesser, Kassler, Kreuz, & McLain-Allen, 1998). Circular arguments may be an important intermediate case.…”