Inferential and Memory Skills in Children's Comprehension of Stories

Abstract

SUMMARY. An experiment was carried out to investigate 7-8 year-olds' use of implicit inferences in understanding stories. Two groups of children, differentiated by their ability at text comprehension, read four short stories and were asked a series of questions after each one. The results showed that skilled readers were better than less skilled readers at answering questions from memory shortly after reading a story, both when the questions could be answered directly from the text, and when they required an inference. However, when the text was made available, the less skilled group remained poorer at answering questions that required an inference, although their performance on literal questions improved to the same level as that of the skilled group. Thus, the experiment supports the idea that a major distinguishing characteristic of skilled readers is that they are good at making inferences, which enable them to relate the ideas in a text one to another and to general knowledge. Additionally, the results provide no support for the claim that differences in ability to make inferences can be attributed to differences in memory for prose: the less skilled group were poorer at making inferences even when the text was available to them.INTRODUCTION IN order to understand stories adequately, children must be able to draw appropriate inferences spontaneously when they hear or read a story. Several studies have shown

Perfil cognitivo de niños con bajos rendimientos en comprensión lectora

“…La construcción de un modelo mental requiere que el lector realice inferencias para la construcción de la representación del texto (Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983;Graesser, et al, 1994;Perfetti, et al, 2005) por lo que resulta esperable que los niños con bajos rendimientos en comprensión posean dificultades en la realización de las mismas y, consecuentemente, fallaran a la hora de la construcción del modelo mental. Los datos arrojados por este estudio se encuentran en consonancia con los resultados de otras investigaciones que han establecido la existencia de diferencias en función del proceso inferencial en grupos de buenos y malos comprendedores (Bowyer-Crane & Snowling, 2005;Cain et al, 2004;Cain & Oakhill, 1999;Oakhill, 1984;Yuill & Oakhill, 1991). Se ha constatado que los comprendedores con rendimientos bajos tienen problemas para hacer inferencias, según Yuill y Oakhill (1991) esto ocurre porque no se pueden despegar de los aspectos concretos del texto poseyendo un comportamiento pasivo frente a la lectura.…”

Children’s integration of information across texts: reading processes and knowledge representations

“…In line with the research presented above, several studies have indicated that children are able to integrate information within a single text (Cain & Oakhill, 1999;Oakhill, 1982Oakhill, , 1984, and that they make connections between text information and background knowledge (Barnes, Dennis, & Haefele-Kalvaitis, 1996;Cain, Oakhill, Barnes, & Bryant, 2001). It is important to note, however, that participants in these studies were explicitly prompted to combine and integrate information, for example by integration-promoting questions.…”

PROLEC-T - prova de compreensão de texto: análise de suas características psicométricas

“…Este tipo de pergunta, por demandar como resposta informações explicitadas no texto, exige apenas uma busca em sua microestrutura (nível local). Em contraste, as perguntas inferenciais requerem processos cognitivos mais sofi sticados, tornando-as mais difíceis de serem respondidas do que as literais (Buarque, Higino, Miranda, Dubeux, & Pedrosa, 1992;Oakhill, 1984).…”