Written Language Comprehension in Younger and Older Adults

Harris, Joyce L.; Rogers, Wendy A.; Qualls, Constance Dean

doi:10.1044/jslhr.4103.603

Cited by 31 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Reasoning that rereading may be one way for older readers to circumvent processing limits, Harris, Rogers, and Qualls (1998) asked participants to read a series of texts and verify a set of statements testing comprehension/retention of information both explicitly stated and implied in the passage, and then to reread the passages and answer the same set of questions. They found that performance of both younger and older adults increased from reading to rereading, with younger and older readers showing similar levels of improvement.…”

Section: Age Differences In Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in rereading

et al. 2004

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Younger and older adults read a series of expository and narrative passages twice in order to answer comprehension questions. Reading time was used to index attentional allocation to word, textbase, and situation model processing and to assess shifts in the allocation policy from the first to the second reading. Older readers' comprehension was at least as good as that of younger readers. Analysis of reading times suggested that for both genres, older adults allocated more attention to situation model features than younger adults did on the first reading, whereas young and old allocated attention similarly to this level of representation on the second reading, suggesting that mature readers may give greater priority to situation model construction when first encountering text. Also, for both genres, older adults showed relatively less facilitation than the young in word-level processing in rereading, suggesting that representation at this level is not as firmly established during reading or decays more quickly for older readers. For narrative texts only, this pattern also obtained for textbase processing. Collectively, these data show that age equivalence in text comprehension at the molar level may be accomplished through different processing routes at the molecular level.

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Section: Age Differences In Readingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age differences in rereading

et al. 2004

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“…The adolescent subjects did indeed learn new words while reading, but the proportion of words learned was similar across genre types. Other studies have also failed to find significant differences in word learning between narratives and expositions (Carroll and Drum, 1982;De Beni, Borella, & Caretti, 2007;Harris, 1998;Hartley, 1986;Johnson, 2003;Tun, 1989;Zabrucky & Moore, 1999).…”

Section: Presently Existing Studies On Discourse Typementioning

confidence: 92%

“…Results indicated that both younger and older adults correctly recalled more propositions from expository than from narrative texts. Additionally, Harris (1998) reported that expositions led to better conceptual representation and faster reading times than did narrative texts. This finding was attributed to the fewer linguistic elements necessary for recall from expositions, thus leading readers to faster understanding and better preservation of conceptual meaning.…”

Section: Presently Existing Studies On Discourse Typementioning

confidence: 97%

Discourse structure and word learning

Strickland

Barrie

Mason

2011

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The extant literature on discourse comprehension distinguishes between two types of texts: narrative and expository (Steen, 1999). Narrative discourse tells readers a story by giving them an account of events; the narration informs and/ or persuades the readership by using textual elements such as theme, plot, and characters. Expository discourse explains or informs the readership by using concepts and techniques such as definition, sequence, categorization, and causeeffect relations.The present study is based on two experiments. In Experiment 1, we compared the two discourse types to examine if college students would be better at extracting the meanings of novel words from one of the two types of discourse structure than from the other. The findings indicated that participants were significantly better at inferring the meaning of novel words from narrative compared to expository discourse. In Experiment 2, we examined the number of situation models that a reader is required to mentally construct, as a possible characteristic that influences the difficulty of learning new word meaning within narrative discourse. Contrary to intuition, fewer novel words were learned in a single-situation, as opposed to a multi-situation model condition, suggesting that the additional inferencing needed to construct multiple models also promotes word learning. Results are discussed with respect to how the structure of written discourse can facilitate word learning in a reader's native language. Implications for education and assessment are also discussed.

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“…The literature frequently distinguishes between narrative and expository (e.g., science) texts (Adam & Revaz, 1996;Brewer, 1980;Harris, Rogers, & Qualls, 1998;León, Escudero, & van den Broek, 2003). Narrative texts make particular connections between facts and usually reflect reasons, the actions of a protagonist, and the problems of daily life or fiction.…”

Section: The Influence Of Text Characteristics and Causal Relations Omentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding Causality in Science Discourse for Middle and High School Students. Summary Task as a Strategy for Improving Comprehension

Gascón

Escudero

2015

Literacy Studies

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Reading comprehension involves a reader developing a mental representation of a text through the establishment of causal relations based on the ideas and events in the text. This is especially relevant to scientific text comprehension. Causal relations are fundamental to the process of comprehension as they provide a framework or scaffolding to order information in a logical way that is consistent with the argument. The most common method of assessing comprehension is based on the reader answering a series of multiple choice questions. It is unusual for comprehension measures to use an open task such as a summary. However, summaries require the reader to use writing skills as well as those of comprehension, thus revealing wide individual differences among students. This gives rise to two questions: (a) up to what point is a summary a reflection of the causal structure of a text, and (b) what-if any-is the influence of the causal relations on the comprehension of more competent and less competent readers? In this chapter we analyze the causal structure of scientific texts, as opposed to that of narratives, and explore how high school students process and comprehend these causal relations. We also examine how students' comprehension of causal relations can be evaluated by multiple choice tasks or open tasks such as summaries. Finally, we discuss some educational implications for improving comprehension in science.

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Written Language Comprehension in Younger and Older Adults

Cited by 31 publications

References 24 publications

Age differences in rereading

Age differences in rereading

Discourse structure and word learning

Understanding Causality in Science Discourse for Middle and High School Students. Summary Task as a Strategy for Improving Comprehension

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