Non-Verbal Cues as Determinants of Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Kingston and White (1967); White, Kingston, and Weaver (1967); and Weaver, White, and Kingston (1968) investigated the relationships of judgements of the concept of and the concept of a protagonist, in a story, using 12 specific bipolar adjectives of Osgood's Semantic Differential (Osgood, Suci, and Tannenbaum, 1957). The reader's own personality behavior and self-concept variables shared a high degree of communality in predicting affective measures of the protagonist in the select reading passage. Congruence of concept measures and self as process, or personality factors have been obtained by Rentz and White (1967). Cloze tests (Taylor, 1957; Weaver and Kingston, 1963) were used as indicators of cognitive dimensions in the reading exercises. In general, post-cloze tests were predictive of general semantic meaning but showed only limited relationships with second order personality factors. The purpose of the present study was to test differential sets from non-verbal cues to a specified reading passage presented to three groups of Negro fifth grade children in order to determine varied connotative meanings and their relationship to cognitive components.