The Effect of Syntactic Structure and Children's Temporal Ability on the Comprehension of Spoken Prose

Abstract

Abstarct The relationship between children's temporal ability and their comprehension of spoken prose as measured by a story recall test was studied using an incidental sample of 36 eleven‐year‐old subjects, The tests of temporal ability consisted of interval reproduction, interval division and pause perception. Significant correlations with total recall were obtained using all of these measures. The story details were analysed according to their syntactic predictability and presentation rate, and the subjects grouped in terms of their temporal ability as indexed by their performance on the interval reproduction test. Recall was best when syntactic predictability of the prose details was high, although there was no overall significant interaction with temporal ability. Presentation rate of the details interacted significantly #opP #lt0‐05#cp with temporal ability in its effect on recall. The nature of temporal ability and its role in information processing were discussed.