Constructing inferences in expository text comprehension

Singer, Murray; Harkness, Dana; Stewart, Susan T.

doi:10.1080/01638539709545013

Cited by 77 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…Indeed, a certain level of literal understanding provides an essential basis for the analytical and cognitive activities that facilitate a higher level of comprehension. Various studies provide evidence that inexperienced readers tend to be more bound to the text, getting stuck at the decoding of individual words, what applies to both native (Cunningham & Stanovich, 2001;Singer, Harkness, & Stewart, 1997) and non-native readers (Bernhardt, 2003;Carrell & Wise, 1998;Horiba, 1996). In accordance with the above findings, Fitzgerald (1995) found that the gap between native and non-native readers in the use of cognitive skills is closing at higher levels of L2 (non-native language) proficiency.…”

Section: The Relationship Between the Different Levels Of Reading Comsupporting

confidence: 72%

Compensatory Reading among ESL Learners: A Reading Strategy Heuristic

Ismail¹,

Petras

Mohamed

et al. 2015

ELT

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This paper aims to gain an insight to the relationship of two different concepts about reading comprehension, namely, the linear model of comprehension and the interactive compensatory theory. Drawing on both the above concepts, a heuristic was constructed about three different reading strategies determined by the specific ways the literal, reorganisation and inferential skills of comprehension interact. The concepts of apt and smart reading strategies were introduced, which refer to two possible ways of compensatory reading. Applying the reading strategy heuristic to the secondary analysis of a large reading assessment data from Malaysian secondary school 3567 ESL learners, compensatory reading was found to be used by a significant group of those students who struggle with poor reading skills. Furthermore, one of the compensatory strategies, namely, smart reading, was found to be positively correlated with the learners' motivation to read and their belief about own reading competence, the proportion of positive answers among smart readers being 3.5% and 3.9% higher than among the mainstream readers, respectively. The findings suggest that the language talent of apt and smart readers (18.2% of the current sample to be discovered and cultivated in the L2 classroom, especially among low-achiever learners who would most benefit from the recognition of compensation as a legitimate skill of reading comprehension.

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Section: The Relationship Between the Different Levels Of Reading Comsupporting

confidence: 72%

Compensatory Reading among ESL Learners: A Reading Strategy Heuristic

Ismail¹,

Petras

Mohamed

et al. 2015

ELT

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“…In fact, even with coherence inferences, comprehenders are more likely to show evidence of drawing inferences when the text is more easily understood, uses more familiar terms, and uses familiar referential synonyms to connect the concepts linked by inferences (e.g., as in narrative rather than in expository texts (Singer, Harkness, & Stewart, 1997). Comprehenders may make predictive inferences only when very interested and when they have enough processing resources available to do so.…”

Section: Author Manuscriptmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Various characteristics of the story (length, episodic structure, ease of referential connectiveness), the inference (degree of predictability, causal importance, focus, number of connections to the story), and the compre-hender (working memory capacity, motivation) can affect which inferences are activated and/or incorporated (Graesser & Bertus, 1998;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992;Murray et al, 1993;O'Brien et al, 1988;St. George et al, 1997;Singer et al, 1997;Whitney et al, 1991;Whitney, Ritchie, & Crane, 1992). Several of these characteristics are confounded with the distinction between predictive and coherence inferences.…”

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confidence: 99%

Right and Left Hemisphere Cooperation for Drawing Predictive and Coherence Inferences during Normal Story Comprehension

Beeman¹,

Bowden²,

2000

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In three experiments, healthy young participants listened to stories promoting inferences and named inference-related test words presented to the right visual field-Left Hemisphere (rvf-LH) or to the left visual field-Right Hemisphere (lvf-RH). Participants showed priming for predictive inferences only for target words presented to the lvf-RH; in contrast, they showed priming for coherence inferences only for target words presented to the rvf-LH. These results, plus the fact that patients with RH brain damage have difficulty drawing coherence inferences and do not show inference-related priming, suggest that information capable of supporting predictive inferences is more likely to be initially activated in the RH than the LH, but following coherence breaks these concepts (now coherence inferences) are completed in the LH. These results are consistent with the theory that the RH engages in relatively coarse semantic coding, which aids full comprehension of discourse.When people comprehend stories, they often make inferences -they assume that some events occurred in the stories, even though those events were not explicitly described. Consider what happens when people read or hear the premise that "The shuttle sat on the ground in the distance, waiting for the signal to be given." If they later read or hear a sentence with a coherence break, that is a sentence that interrupts the logical chain of a story, such as "After a huge roar and a bright flash, the shuttle disappeared into space leaving clouds of smoke in its wake," most people infer that the shuttle was launched. As established decades ago, once comprehenders make inferences, they include these inferences when recalling stories (Glenn, 1978;Paris & Lindauer, 1976;Baggett, 1975), and they have a difficult time distinguishing inferred information from information explicitly stated (Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973). This suggests that normal comprehenders incorporate some inferences into their representation of the discourse. HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript Author ManuscriptSome RH-damaged (RHD) patients have difficulty drawing inferences, suggesting that the right hemisphere (RH) may play an important role when comprehenders draw such inferences (Beeman, 1993;Brownell, Potter, Bihrle, & Gardner, 1986). The following experiments explore the idea that concepts necessary for supporting inferences are more likely to be initially activated in the RH than in the LH and that at the coherence break inferences are more likely to be selected-activated strongly enough to reach awareness, to be processed further, or to be output, in the sense proposed by Allport (1987) -in the LH for incorporation into the discourse representation (Beeman, 1993). PREDICTIVE AND COHERENCE INFERENCESIn principle, comprehenders could draw several types of inferences. Comprehenders could make inferences to embellish or elaborate on a story. They could draw inferences to predict upcoming consequences. For example, as soon as people hear tha...

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“…To substantiate our interpretation of the data in this region in terms of inferences, we should demonstrate that the increase of reading times at the end of the sentence is actually due to inferential processing. As mentioned in the introduction, evidence for making the inference online may be obtained from the combined results of a reading task and a verification task in which the inferential information has to be verified as fast as possible (see also Singer & Halldorson, 1996;Singer, Halldorson, Lear, & Andrusiak, 1992;Singer, Harkness, & Stewart, 1997). The combination of an increase in reading time at the end of the sentence and a decrease in verification time, as a result of the presence of the conjunction, can be interpreted as evidence for online inferential processing.…”

Section: Downloaded By [Mpi Psychiatry] At 02:48 16 November 2011mentioning

confidence: 99%