Children's Inferential Abilities in the Context of Reading to Understand

Abstract

JoHNSON, HOLLY, and SMrrH, LINDA B. Children's Inferential Abilities in the Context of Reading to Understand. CHmLD DEVELOPMENT, 1981, 52, 1216-1223. Thirdand fifth-grade children's abilities to make inferences in the context of reading and understanding a lengthy story were examined. Comparisons of performances in several tasks indicated that at both age levels, children possessed the basic competence to make an inference. Moreover, at both age levels, the number of inferences derived from explicit story information was limited by memory for premise information. The most critical result was that the younger but not the older children made fewer inferences when the component premises for an inference were located in separate paragraphs than when they occurred in the same paragraphs in the story. The effect of premise separation on younger children's performance was not due simply to poor memory for premise information. Rather, young children do not appear to integrate remembered text information when it is contained in separate scenes in a story. Younger children thus appear to be more limited than older children in the range of situations in which they can successfully use their basic inferential skills. This conclusion stems from the examination of inferential skills in