Text Comprehension In Children Research Articles

Anaphor Processing During Reading Comprehension in Students With Autism Spectrum Disorder

With the purpose of promoting academic inclusion, it is essential for educators to understand the nature underlying poor reading comprehension in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). In this study, we examined the time course of anaphor resolution during text comprehension in children and adolescents with ASD and a group of children with Typical Development (TD) matched in chronological age (age range: 9–16) and non-verbal IQ. Their eye movements were monitored as they read short paragraphs in which two factors were manipulated: (1) the semantic typicality of an antecedent (e.g. shark vs. salmon) with regards to a category noun that serves as anaphor (e.g. fish) and (2) the distance between the antecedent and anaphor (e.g. near vs. far). Both, children with ASD and TD showed more and longer first fixations in the near anaphors than in the far anaphors but not in the post-anaphor region which suggests that the effect of distance on anaphor resolution was immediate. The reverse effect of distance indicated that the far condition was too demanding for students of these ages to occur online. Typical antecedents received fewer and shorter revisits than atypical antecedents but only for participants with TD. In contrast, ASD participants did not show such typicality facilitation. Finally, children with ASD made more but shorter fixations and revisits in general than their typical peers. Theoretical and applied implications of our results for the literacy training on ASD participants are discussed.

Role of PASS Cognitive Processes in Explaining the Ability of Word Reading and Text Comprehension in Children with Dyslexia

Role of PASS Cognitive Processes in Explaining the Ability of Word Reading and Text Comprehension in Children with Dyslexia

Fine-Grained Assessment of Children's Text Comprehension Skills.

Text comprehension is an essential skill for achievement in personal, academic, and professional life. Therefore, it is tremendously important that children’s text comprehension skills are actively monitored from an early stage. Text comprehension is, however, a complex process in which different reading abilities continuously interact with each other on the word, sentence, and text levels. In educational practice, various tests are used to measure these different reading abilities in isolation, which makes it very difficult to understand why a child scores high or low on a specific reading test and to adequately tailor reading instruction to the child’s needs. Dynamic assessment has the potential to offer insights and guidance to teachers as cognitive processes that are important for learning are examined. In dynamic tests, students receive mediation through instruction when answering test questions. Although computer-based dynamic assessment in the reading domain holds potential, there is almost no support for the validity of dynamic measures of text comprehension. The aim of the present study is to determine design principles for the intended use of computer-based dynamic assessment of text comprehension. Based on the dynamic assessment literature, we developed a model for assessing the different reading abilities in conjunction. The assumption is that this model gives a fine-grained view of children’s strengths and weaknesses in text comprehension and provides detailed information on children’s instructional needs. The model was applied in a computer-based (fourth-grade) reading assessment and evaluated in practice through a three-group experimental design. We examined whether it is possible to (1) measure different aspects of the reading process in conjunction in order to obtain a full understanding of children’s text comprehension skills, (2) measure children’s learning potential in text comprehension, and (3) provide information on their instructional needs. The results show that while the model helped in explaining the children’s text comprehension scores, unexpectedly, mediation did not clearly lead to progress in text comprehension. Based on the outcomes, we substantiate design principles for computer-based dynamic assessment of text comprehension.

Linguistic and Cognitive Profiles of 8- to 15-Year-Old Children With Specific Reading Comprehension Difficulties

This article presents two studies investigating the role of executive functioning in written text comprehension in children and adolescents. In a first study, the involvement of executive functions in reading comprehension performance was examined in normally developing children in fifth grade. Two aspects of text comprehension were differentiated: literal and inferential processes. The results demonstrated that while three aspects of executive functioning (working memory, planning, and inhibition processes) were significantly predictive of the performance on the inferential questions of the comprehension test, these factors did not predict the scores on the literal tasks of the test. In a second experiment, the linguistic and cognitive profiles of children in third/fifth and seventh/ninth grades with a specific reading comprehension deficit were examined. This analysis revealed that the deficits experienced by the less skilled comprehenders in both the linguistic and the executive domains could evolve over time. As a result, linguistic factors do not make it possible to distinguish between good and poor comprehenders among the group of older children, whereas the difficulties relating to executive processing remain stable over development. These findings are discussed in the context of the need to take account of the executive difficulties that characterize less skilled comprehenders of any age, especially for remediation purposes.

Timing of Gestures: Gestures Anticipating or Simultaneous With Speech as Indexes of Text Comprehension in Children and Adults.

The deep comprehension of a text is tantamount to the construction of an articulated mental model of that text. The number of correct recollections is an index of a learner's mental model of a text. We assume that another index of comprehension is the timing of the gestures produced during text recall; gestures are simultaneous with speech when the learner has built an articulated mental model of the text, whereas they anticipate the speech when the learner has built a less articulated mental model. The results of four experiments confirm the predictions deriving from our assumptions for both children and adults. Provided that the recollections are correct, the timing of gestures can differ and can be considered a further measure of the quality of the mental model, beyond the number of correct recollections.

Levels of text comprehension in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD): the influence of language phenotype.

Many children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) have reading comprehension difficulties, but the level of processing at which comprehension is most vulnerable and the influence of language phenotype on comprehension skill is currently unclear. We explored comprehension at sentence and passage levels across language phenotypes. Children with ASD and age-appropriate language skills (n = 25) demonstrated similar syntactic and semantic facilitation to typically developing peers. In contrast, few children with ASD and language impairments (n = 25) could read beyond the single word level. Those who could read sentences benefited from semantic coherence, but were less sensitive to syntactic coherence. At the passage level, the strongest predictor of comprehension was vocabulary knowledge. This emphasizes that the intimate relationship between language competence and both decoding skill and comprehension is evident at the sentence, as well as the passage level, for children with ASD.

The role of working memory, inhibition, and processing speed in text comprehension in children

The aim of the present study was to investigate age-related differences in text comprehension performance in 10- to 12-year-old children, analyzing the joint influence of working memory (WM), inhibition-related mechanisms, and processing speed. Children were administered: i) a text comprehension task in which the memory load was manipulated by allowing them to see the text while answering or withdrawing the text (text-present versus text-absent conditions); and ii) WM, inhibition and processing speed tasks. Results showed that age-related differences were not significant in the text-present condition, whereas older children performed better than younger ones in the text-absent condition. Regression analyses indicated that only WM accounted for a significant part of the variance in the text-present condition, whereas in the text-absent condition comprehension performance was explained by the combined contribution of WM and resistance to distractor interference. These findings confirm the crucial role of WM capacity in text processing and indicate that specific inhibitory mechanisms are involved in children's text processing when the comprehension task involves memory load.

The role of background knowledge in text comprehension for children learning English as an additional language

Children learning English as an additional language (EAL) often experience difficulties with reading comprehension relative to their monolingual peers. While low levels of vocabulary appear to be one factor underlying these difficulties, other factors such as a relative lack of appropriate background knowledge may also contribute. Sixteen children learning EAL and 16 of their monolingual peers, matched for word reading accuracy, were assessed using a standard measure of reading comprehension and an experimental measure of reading comprehension for which relevant background knowledge was taught before assessing understanding. Tests of receptive and expressive vocabulary were also completed. Results confirmed lower levels of reading comprehension for children learning EAL for both standard and ‘background’ controlled measures. Analysis of comprehension by question type on the experimental measure showed that while both groups made use of taught knowledge to answer inferential questions, children learning EAL had specific difficulties with both literal questions and questions requiring the interpretation of a simile. It is suggested that relevant background information should be used to facilitate children's text comprehension. Furthermore, several factors, especially vocabulary differences, but also text search strategies, context use and comprehension monitoring skills, may contribute to the comprehension difficulties experienced by children learning EAL.

Text comprehension in Chinese children: Relative contribution of verbal working memory, pseudoword reading, rapid automatized naming, and onset-rime phonological segmentation.

The present study examined the role of verbal working memory (memory span, tongue twister), 2-character Chinese pseudoword reading, rapid automatized naming (letters, numbers), and phonological segmentation (deletion of rimes and onsets) in inferential text comprehension in Chinese in 518 Chinese children in Hong Kong in Grades 3 to 5. It was hypothesized that verbal working memory, together with a small contribution from the other constructs, would explain individual variation in the children's text comprehension. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analyses generally upheld the hypotheses. Though Chinese pseudoword reading did not play an important mediating role in the effect of verbal working memory on text comprehension, verbal working memory had strong effects on pseudoword reading and text comprehension. The findings on the Chinese language support current Western literature as well as display the differential role of the constructs in Chinese reading comprehension.

Compreensão de texto em crianças: comparações entre diferentes classes de inferência a partir de uma metodologia on-line

A partir de uma metodologia on-line, examinou-se a compreensão de textos em crianças de 7 e 9 anos em relação a diferentes tipos de inferências estabelecidas durante a leitura de uma história: inferências causais, de estado e de previsão. A metodologia on-line consiste na leitura interrompida do texto, sendo feitas perguntas inferenciais sobre cada passagem lida e sobre o que o leitor acha que virá a seguir (previsão). Verificou-se que as inferências de previsão envolvem informações extratextuais e requerem a formulação de hipóteses sobre a continuidade da narrativa; gerando, nas crianças, certa dificuldade em prever eventos que estão por acontecer. Conclui-se que a capacidade de estabelecer inferências durante a leitura de um texto varia em função da natureza da informação inferencial solicitada, e que esta capacidade se desenvolve com a idade. Dicute-se o caráter inovador da metodologia on-line de investigação e sua relevância para a pesquisa na área.

Brede en Diepe Woordkennis, Vaktaal en Tekstbegrip

In this article various aspects of word knowledge and their relations to the text comprehension skills have been investigated for 197 monolingual and bilingual children in grade 5. All children performed three different vocabulary tasks, measuring breadth (quantitative knowledge: 'how many words do they know?'), depth (qualitative knowledge: 'how well do they know (paradigmatic and decontextualized, syntagmatic) relationships between words?'), and words used in school texts (scientific jargon: 'do they know the science-specific meaning of words?'). Besides this, a text comprehension task was administered investigate the relative importance of these different aspects of word knowledge to text comprehension. The analyses showed that bilingual children performed significantly lower on all tasks as compared to their monolingual peers. The highest differences were found on breadth of vocabulary, the lowest on the depth task. Besides this, the breadth task showed the highest correlations with text comprehension, and the depth task the lowest. These conclusions hold for both monolinguals and bilinguals. Finally, a (stepwise) multiple regression analysis revealed that the breadth task explained 38% of the variance of the scores on the text comprehension task. The depth task adjusts to that only 2%. Analyses for monolingual and bilingual children separately yielded comparable outcomes. From this, we conclude that for both monolingual and bilingual children text comprehension is determined by breadth of vocabulary.

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

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.

Pediatric speech and language disorders following TBI.

Pediatric speech and language disorders following TBI.

Comparison of Literal, Inferential, and Intentional Text Comprehension in Children with Mild or Severe Closed-Head Injury

Children with head injury have impairments in pragmatic language at the level of both single words and texts. Text comprehension deficits are likely to be the more consequential for everyday and academic function, yet the relative magnitudes of literal and nonliteral text comprehension deficits have not been measured. We compared the magnitude of the impairment in three forms of text comprehension for children with mild or severe head injury relative with controls: literal language (understanding literal text information), inferential language (making pragmatic inferences, textual coherence inferences, or enriching inferences), and the language of mental states and intentions (eg, producing speech acts, appreciating irony, and understanding deception). Effect sizes were used to measure the magnitude of the difference between children with head injury and age-matched controls. Children with severe closed-head injury were significantly impaired on tasks of literal text understanding, inferencing, and intentionality. Children with mild head injury were impaired on some inferencing and all intentionality tasks, although they had no literal text comprehension deficits. For both groups, the greatest deficits (ie, the largest effect sizes) were on tasks requiring understanding of the language of mental states and intentions. The data bear on the long-term effects of childhood closed-head injury on text- and discourse-level language and also on the nature and timing of language rehabilitation in children with head injury.

Handbook of Psycholinguistics

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A trading relationship between reading skill and domain knowledge in children's text comprehension

Although the concept of general reading skill has been assumed to be the primary contribution to comprehension, a demonstration that reading skill contributes to comprehension independent of domain knowledge has been lacking. This research investigates the relative contribution and trade‐off effects of children's knowledge and reading skill in text comprehension in a single study. Children in Grades 4 through 7, grouped as high or low reading skill and high or low knowledge on the basis of a domain‐specific topic, participated in this study. Comprehension was measured in two parallel texts: one domain specific and one domain general. The results suggested that domain knowledge and reading skill can be traded in order to achieve similar levels of comprehension. Reading skill compensates for deficient knowledge and specific knowledge compensates for deficient reading ability.

児童の文章理解におけるつぶやき読みの効果

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of a reading format with “whispering -to-oneself” (Tanaka, 1983) on children's text comprehension. In this format, subjects were asked to read a text in a whisper and to narrate ideas which occurred to them during the reading. Both oral and silent reading formats were used as control conditions. Ninety-one 6th grade children were assigned to one of the three formats. Three aspects of the children's text comprehension were measured as dependent variables: text memory both on the literal level and on the phonological level, and text processing on the semantic level. Analysis of covariance, where the score of the Japanese language test was a covariate, was performed. Results showed the dominance of the “whispering-to-oneself” format over the other two in the phonological memory of the text, but not in the semantic processipg. These results were discussed in terms of setting of reading goal and distribution of processing resources in text processing. The necessity of experimental control on the reading formats was also pointed out.