The Discourse Processing Operations of Children

Abstract

EXAMINED THE EXTENT AND TYPE OF INFORMATION rendered by children during recall of connected discourse. This involved a comparison of selected good and poor readers' memory of text to the content and structure of the text itself. The content and structure of the text was defined in terms of its propositional structure, interpropositional structure, and the structural importance of the idea units to the theme. Information appearing both in the recall of the reader and in the text was considered explicit information. This information was defined in terms of its propositional and interpropositional representation and identified in terms of its occurrence during either a free or probed recall situation. Information appearing in the recall of the reader, but not the text, was considered inferred information. This information was classified using Frederiksen's Taxonomy of Text-Based Inferences. Results indicated that poor readers differed from good readers 1) in the extent to which they recalled complete propositions, the propositional structure, and the interpropositional structure, and 2) in their ability to generate interpropositional structure. There was no difference in the relative proportion of the inferred information to the total information in the recalls of good and poor readers. Reading comprehension for both good and poor readers was both constructive and abstractive, and readers seem to abstract textual material for the purpose of acquiring a meaningful interpretation based upon their own schemata.