Sentence Elaboration and Retention of Good, Average and Poor Readers

Abstract

This paper reports two studies designed to replicate previous findings by Bransford and his associates. These investigators found that good readers produced reliably more precise sentence elaborations than average and poor readers; average readers surpassed poor readers. Poor readers were also effectively trained to produce precise elaborations. Sixty-one good, average and poor readers participated in Study I. In groups of 5/6, subjects were given sentences containing arbitrary relations between agents and events, and asked to generate elaborations to aid comprehension and retention. The results indicated that compared to average and poor readers, good readers generated substantially more precise elaborations and recalled more information. However, the groups of average and poor readers did not differ from one another in sentence elaboration or recall. This finding was attributed to low-average readers constituting the vast majority of the average reader group. Prior research indicates that low-average or low-achieving students and poor readers demonstrate much overlap in their cognitive and metacognitive deficits. Study II reports successful training of low-average and poor readers in precise sentence elaboration through a self-questioning procedure modelled on cognitive behavior modification. The results from both studies replicated previous research by Bransford and his associates, except for the performance and subsequent training of the low-average readers. Implications of the results for research and practice are discussed.