Evidence for Top-Down Processing in Reading Comprehension of Children

Abstract

A B S T R A C TThe current research discusses the problem of the different reading processing models that prevail nowadays in Psychology. Here we find a duality between the bottom-up approach, which has been extensively studied, and the top-down approach, which has been scarcely investigated. We attempt to identify the moment in a child's development when top-down processing in reading comprehension starts working. The level of difficulty of the texts used to assess comprehension was experimentally manipulated by breaking up the structure of the words in order to prevent the use of bottom-up processing. The school year of the participating children was the second independent variable. The effects of both variables on reading comprehension were shown, besides the existence of top-down processing in children. The results suggest that top-down processing is present from very early ages, that it starts to develop around the second year of primary school and that its effectiveness is comparable to that of bottom-up processing in later school years. Evidencia del procesamiento arriba-abajo en la comprensión lectora en niños R E S U M E NEl presente estudio aborda la problemática de los modelos de procesamiento de la lectura actualmente vigentes en la Psicología, donde existe un dualismo entre los modelos de procesamiento de abajo-arriba, ampliamente estudiados, y los modelos de procesamiento de arriba-abajo, investigados limitadamente. Buscamos conocer en qué momento del desarrollo evolutivo comienza a funcionar el procesamiento de arriba-abajo en la comprensión de la lectura. Se manipuló experimentalmente el nivel de dificultad de los textos utilizados para evaluar la comprensión, rompiendo la estructura de las palabras con el fin de imposibilitar el uso del procesamiento de abajo-arriba, y también se utilizó como segunda variable independiente el curso escolar de los participantes. Se comprobaron los efectos de ambas variables sobre la comprensión lectora y se probó la existencia del procesamiento desde arriba en niños. Los resultados mostraron que el procesamiento de arriba-abajo está presente desde edades muy tempranas, comenzando a desarrollarse desde segundo de primaria y alcanzando en los cursos superiores una efectividad equiparable al desarrollo del procesamiento desde abajo.© 2013 Colegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Madrid. Todos los derechos reservados.Reading comprehension is one of the linguistic skills, specifically the one that refers to the interpretation of written discourse. This skill constitutes a "complex activity which simultaneously mobilises different representational levels and procedures" (Fayol, 2004, p. 191), since it is made up of linguistic components as well as cognitive, perceptive, attitudinal and sociological factors. In consequence, we can say that this ability goes beyond the strictly linguistic plane and takes in the complete process of text interpretation, from decoding and linguistic comprehension to interpretation and evaluation. Thus, readers do not merely draw on information from...

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