Making the right connections: Differential effects of reading intervention for subgroups of comprehenders

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of different types of questioning interventions on students' reading comprehension. Fourth-grade students ( n = 246) were identified as struggling, average, or good readers and assigned randomly within school to one of three questioning interventions: two inferential conditions (Causal or General) or one literal condition (“Who, What, Where, When” or W-questioning). Teachers delivered the interventions for 20–30 min, 2–4 times per week, for 8–10 weeks. All readers made reliable pre- to posttest comprehension gains as measured by story recall ( ps < .001 to .04). Differential effects for intervention were found between two subgroups of struggling comprehenders—elaborators and paraphrasers. Elaborators benefited more than paraphrasers from Causal questioning ( d = .86) whereas paraphrasers benefited more than elaborators from General questioning ( d = 1.46). These findings suggest that identifying subgroups is important in developing and evaluating the effectiveness of reading comprehension interventions.