Text comprehension and its relation to coherence and cohesion in children's fictional narratives

Abstract

This study investigated the relation between children's text comprehension, their ability to produce a coherent and cohesive story, and the extent to which external cues aid these aspects of narrative production. Children with reading comprehension difficulties demonstrated deficits in both aspects of story organization, relative to same‐age skilled comprehenders and younger children of equivalent comprehension ability. Their performance was poor when a topic title was used to elicit the narrative, but performance improved when stories were elicited with more informative verbal and pictorial prompts. Stories with poorer structures did not contain proportionately fewer connectives in general, but the type of connective included differed in relation to story event structure. These findings are discussed in relation to the use of coherence and cohesion in narratives and their relation to comprehension skill.