The influence of connectives on young readers' processing and comprehension of text.

Abstract

Connectives are cohesive devices that signal the relations between clauses and are critical to the construction of a coherent representation of a text's meaning. We investigated young readers' knowledge, processing, and comprehension of temporal, causal, and adversative connectives using off-line and on-line tasks. In a cloze task, 10-year-olds were more accurate than 8-year-olds on temporal and adversative connectives, but both age groups differed from adult levels of performance (Experiment 1). When required to rate the 'sense' of two-clause sentences linked by connectives, 10-year-olds and adults were better at discriminating between clauses linked by appropriate and inappropriate connectives than were 8-year-olds. The 10-year-olds differed from adults only on the temporal connectives (Experiment 2). In contrast, on-line reading time measures indicated that 8-year-olds' processing of text is influenced by connectives as they read, in much the same way as 10-year-olds'.Both age groups read text more quickly when target two-clause sentences were linked by an appropriate connective compared to texts in which a connective was neutral (and), inappropriate to the meaning conveyed by the two clauses, or not present (Experiments 3 and 4). These findings indicate that although knowledge and comprehension of connectives is still developing in young readers, connectives aid text processing in typically developing readers.

Processing Connectives with a Complex Form-Function Mapping in L2: The Case of French “En Effet”

“…Discourse connectives play a crucial role for language processing and comprehension for adult native speakers (e.g., Murray, 1997; Sanders and Noordman, 2000). Even young readers and poor readers do benefit, in terms of comprehension, from the presence of connectives for the online processing of discourse relations (Mouchon et al, 1995; Cain and Nash, 2011; van Silfhout et al, 2014). Thus, connectives play a crucial role for speakers' language competence.…”

Content and Epistemic Relations: A Developmental Study of Recall

“…Although the differences between content and epistemic coherence relations have been shown on different levels (as we outlined above), no clear results could be reached as regards recall of these relations and the interaction with the presence of connectives (e.g., Cain & Nash, 2011;Degand & Sanders, 2002 Millis, Graesser, and Haberlandt (1993) and Sanders and Noordman (2000) have shown that adding connectives did not improve performance in tasks participants had to perform after reading. Martins et al (2006) conducted a study involving the connective 'that's why'.…”

Actes du Symposium international sur la litéracie à l’école = International Symposium for Educational Literacy (SILE/ISEL)

“…Plusieurs recherches ont montré que l'introduction de connecteurs (mais, parce que, soudain, etc.) améliore à la fois le traitement en temps réel, par exemple en accélérant ou en ralentissant le rythme de lecture, et la compréhension, évaluée par exemple par des questions ou des épreuves de remémoration (Bianco, 2003;Cain et Nash, 2011;Mouchon, Fayol et Gaonac'h, 1995).…”