Schema shifting: Children's cognitive monitoring of the prose-schema interaction in comprehension

Children's Sensitivity to Comprehension Failure in Interpreting a Nonliteral Use of an Utterance

“…These children understand when they have not understood the use of an utterance. These conclusions are surprising, given the conclusions of other investigators that young children are insensitive to inadequacies in their own understanding (see Markman, 1977;Paris & Cross, 1983;Townsend, 1983), in many situations do not detect inconsistent information (Wagoner, 1983), do not base comprehension evaluations on inconsistencies when they are detected (Flavell et al, 1981;Harris et al, 1981), and are generally deficient in comprehension monitoring (Markman, 1981;Paris & Cross, 1983).…”

“…Comprehension failure occurs when a listener fails to integrate inconsistent information in an utterance (or sentence) and the context of the utterance. The insensitivity of young children usually is attributed to the children's failure to monitor comprehension and thus either to detect inconsistencies and their own incomprehension (Markman, 1977(Markman, , 1979Paris & Cross, 1983;Townsend, 1983) or at least to explicitly acknowledge their own incomprehension (Flavell, Speer, Green, & August, 1981;Harris, Kruithof, Terwogt, & Visser, 1981).…”