Concept Availability in the Causal Inferences of Children and Adults

Abstract

What supplies the concepts in causal inferences in story comprehension? This question was examined in 5 experiments. Elementary school children and college students listened to stories containing a "premise" sentence describing a character's intent in initiating a series of actions, followed by an unexpected "outcome." After each story, the subjects were asked inference questions about the reason for the outcome (Experiments 1-4) or asked to explain the outcome (Experiment 5). In the various experiments, the availability of object concepts for an inference was manipulated by providing 0 or 2 clues preceding the outcome, additional filler information that diluted the clue information, a mention of an object in the premise or no mention, and an object title for each story or no title. The results suggested that the availability of an object concept in sentences prior to the outcome was a critical determinant of whether an object inference occurred, especially for children. Given availability, the thematic prominence of the object influences whether the object will be used in an inference.

The Effects of Knowledge Availability and Knowledge Accessibility on Coherence and Elaborative Inferencing in Children from Six to Fifteen Years of Age

“…The relation between knowledge accessibility and elaborative inferencing generally becomes more pronounced with increasing age; in young children, this relationship is somewhat unclear, possibly because they make relatively few elaborative inferences. The accessibility of semantic information, then, seems as important for knowledge-based inferencing as it is for text-based inferencing (Ackerman et al, 1990).…”

The Role of Comprehension Monitoring, Theory of Mind, and Vocabulary Depth in Predicting Story Comprehension and Recall of Kindergarten Children

“…One of the language abilities most strongly related to comprehension at all ages is the size of a person's lexicon (Florit et al., , ; Nation & Snowling, ; Protopapas, Sideridis, Mouzaki, & Simos, ; Verhoeven & van Leeuwe, ). This is in part explained by vocabulary being, among other things, an indicator of world knowledge (Stahl, ; Stahl & Fairbanks, ), which is in turn essential for making inferences (Ackerman, Silver, & Glickman, ; Cain et al., ; Calvo, ). For example, in the text “The paleontologist packed the vertebra to take to his workplace,” the inference that the paleontologist was in an outdoor location, such as a mountain, requires knowing the word paleontologist , but it mostly requires knowledge about the field of paleontology, such as knowing the kinds of activities, people, elements, and places usually involved in it.…”

Reading Comprehension: A Computerized Intervention with Primary‐age Poor Readers

“…Cain and Oakhill () found children with comprehension difficulties to be poor at inference‐making, and further research has shown that the relation between comprehension ability and inference‐making skill remains strong when knowledge base is controlled for (Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, ). However, an inference cannot be made without the ability to relate the information in the text to wider knowledge (Ackerman, Silver, & Glickman, ). Much experience is required to develop these thinking skills and instruction that promotes critical thinking, and considering alternatives in decision‐making has been shown to augment reading comprehension (Fletcher, Lyon, Fuchs, & Barnes, ).…”