Prose Comprehension Research Articles

Effects of Schema-Based and Text Structure-Based Cues on Expository Prose Comprehension in Fourth Graders

Abstract We investigated the effects of schema-based cues (i.e., previewing) and text structure-based cues (i.e., structure cueing) on comprehension of expository prose. Seventy-four fourth-grade subjects were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions: previewing, structure cueing, and control. The procedures for both experimental groups consisted of a (a) training activity, (b) silent reading of a passage, (c) multiple-choice test, and (d) student-generated summary. Subjects in the previewing strategy group received instruction in focusing on preview statements preceding targeted portions of the text. Subjects in the structure cueing strategy group received instruction in text organizational patterns focusing on problem/solution and comparison/contrast formats. The control group received no instruction. Subjects participated in six 50-minute instructional and testing sessions over a 3-week period. Dependent measures consisted of initial and delayed multiple-choice tests, student-generated su...

Retelling and the Reading Comprehension of Proficient and Less-Proficient Readers

Abstract This study investigated the effects of practice in retelling on the prose comprehension of fourth-grade proficient and less-proficient readers across four practice sessions. The subjects in this study were 48 fourth-grade students (24 proficient readers and 24 less-proficient readers). Subjects were assigned, by proficiency level, to one of four story-order conditions. At each of the four sessions, the subjects silently read a story and rendered a free recall. Subjects were provided with opportunities to read and retell; however, no explicit teacher instruction was provided. At the conclusion of the first and fourth sessions, subjects responded to an eight-item cued-recall assessment. Analysis of the free-recall protocols and the responses to cued-recall questions revealed that practice in retelling across only four sessions resulted in significant increases in the number of propositions recalled, the proportion of story structure elements recalled, and the number of cued-recall questions answered correctly for both proficient and less-proficient readers. Practice in retelling resulted in significant improvements in the quantity and quality of the retellings of proficient and less-proficient readers. The results of this study support the hypothesis that by discourse, the reader learns something about organizing and remembering text-acquired information. The findings of this study are presented in light of current theories of verbal learning. Issues related to the use of retelling as a reading-comprehension assessment task are discussed.

The effects of computer-based instruction on college students’ comprehension of classic research

Our purpose in this research was to determine the extent to which computer-based instruction can replace conventional teaching in experimental psychology. In Experiment 1, students from an advanced cognition and thinking course participated in a simulation of Schallert’s (1976) study of the role of context in prose comprehension and in a simulation of Carpenter and Just’s (1975) study of sentence-picture verification latencies. Half of the students completed each experiment with the computer, and half were taught traditionally. Comprehension of the purpose and design of the experiments was tested immediately after the laboratory session and 1 month later during the final examination. There were no significant differences between the groups. Several students in Experiment 1 appeared to rush through the experiments and pay little attention to the explanations. In Experiment 2, we studied the effectiveness of computer-based instruction in experimental laboratory sections that did or did not require a follow-up assignment. The second variable was introduced so that some factor of seriousness or importance of the laboratory exercise could be measured. Results from this study indicated that, regardless of the perceived importance of a laboratory exercise, students who studied classic research in a traditional setting comprehended the purpose and design of the experiment better than did the students who worked on the computer. In addition, the students assigned to write up the experiment performed better than did the students who were given no follow-up assignment.

Imagery skill and preference in bilinguals

AbstractA number of studies have reported differences in the performance of bilinguals and monolinguals in verbal tasks. It has been suggested that one source of this difference is a greater tendency among bilinguals to use non‐verbal ways of representing events, because of the potential for confusions between their two verbal codes. In the present study, bilingual and monolingual college students were compared on three dimensions of self‐reported aspects of imagery—control, vividness and preference—as well as on a performance measure of spatial manipulation skill. When these tasks were preceded by a nominally verbal activity (prose comprehension), there were no group differences on the self‐report or objective imagery measures. In contrast, when they were preceded by an imagery rating task, some evidence of a compensatory reliance on spatial codes among bilinguals was obtained. Implications of these task induction effects on both subjective and performance measures of a skill were discussed.

The Effect of Prereading, Rhetorically-Oriented Frameworks on the Recall of Two Structurally Different Expository Texts

Research in both first and second language reading has undertaken the study of discourse structure and the influence of the rhetorical organization of the text on readers' passage comprehension. A considerable amount of research has also examined the effect of text adjuncts of various kinds on passage comprehension. The present study explored the effect of providing novice foreign language readers information about the rhetorical structure of an expository text as a text adjunct. Two passages were tested under each of three conditions: no framework, minimal framework, and expanded framework. Results indicate that an expanded framework is an effective text adjunct for the comprehension of expository prose.

Ideational prominence and reading comprehension of expository prose: a partial replication

ABSTRACTIt has often been demonstrated that adults are more likely to remember important text elements than less important elements –“levels effect”. It is not clear whether the same effect exists in children because the evidence is inconsistent. Most of the existing studies with children can be criticised for failing to include adult subjects as well as children, thereby making it impossible to determine whether the observed differences between adults and children reflect genuine differences in processing or just the effects of strategies for coping with the specific texts selected for the children. The present study partly replicated a study that found no evidence for a levels effect in children (Baumann, 1981) with a group of adults. With one passage stronger evidence for a levels effect was found with the adults in our study than was found with children, whereas with the second passage no evidence for a levels effect was found in either study. It was argued that this finding suggested that there were differences between adults and children in the extent to which they engaged in the type of processing that resulted in levels effects, but also that texts differed in the degree to which they induced this type of processing, and that the latter factor had to be taken into account in developmental studies.

The effect of systematic training in elaboration on word meaning and prose comprehension in poor readers

This paper reports two interrelated, exploratory training studies to promote word knowledge and textual comprehension through elaboration in poor readers compared with their controls. The results suggest that systematic, sustained in situ training helped these poor readers, although both the training approaches and stimulus materials would need refinement.

Signaling Effects: A Review of the Research—Part I

This article reviews previous research on the effects of certain structural cues, called signals, that affect a reader's comprehension of expository prose. It concludes that the inconsistent results of many studies may be due to inadequate methodologies that have failed to control for confounding variables, such as text length and difficulty, reader familiarity with the topic, and timing of comprehension tests. Further, accepted signal types (headings, logical connectives, and previews) have not been sufficiently examined for their individual effects, perhaps creating unidentified disordinal interactions that could preclude the possibility of researchers identifying significant effects. This article concludes with recommendations for more valid research methodology to be used in prose assessment studies. The next issue of this journal will present Part II of this article, which details a new study of signaling effects for readers of expository prose, a study that is based on the refined methodology suggested in this article.

Conceptual Graphs as Instructional Tools

Conceptual graphs are a method of diagraming knowledge structures. They are valuable in a variety of applications including design of instructional materials, student evaluation and diagnosis, and theoretical research. One problem has been the identification of methods for eliciting or measuring the “internal” knowledge structures to develop conceptual graphs. Several methods of mapping conceptual graphs have been used in various research domains (e.g., free recall, sorting, ordering, etc.). Most of these traditional methods suffer from serious drawbacks. To overcome these problems, a question probe method has been adapted from work done in the area of prose comprehension. The question probe technique is a method for systematically developing a set of “test questions”. The method allows for the direct development of conceptual graphs and quantitative comparison of the graphs. The question probe technique has been successfully used to systematically develop instructional materials, evaluate/diagnose student understanding of course material, evaluate alternative instructional methods, and assess the relationship between instruction and problem solving performance.

Dynamics of activation in semantic and episodic memory.

Spreading-activation models for the structure of semantic and episodic memory postulate a network of interconnected nodes in which activation spreads from a source node to recipient nodes. These models account for a broad range of memory-related processes, including word recognition, sentence verification, prose comprehension, and sentence production. A fundamental question regarding this account concerns the nature of activation growth at each node in the network. Two mutually exclusive possibilities are (a) that activation grows in a discrete fashion, making abrupt transitions between two or more distinct states and (b) that activation grows continuously from a resting level to an asymptotic level. In the present article, we characterize this dichotomy with examples from the literature, and we apply an adaptive priming procedure for testing discrete versus continuous activation models. Our procedure involves the presentation of prime stimuli at various moments before a test stimulus; subjects are required to make a lexical (word/nonword) decision about the test stimulus. The duration of the interval between the prime and test stimuli is varied adaptively on the basis of subjects' performance. Reaction times are recorded as a function of this duration. According to discrete activation models, there is a unique reaction-time distribution associated with each possible state of node activation. The distribution of reaction times observed when the test stimulus appears near the moment of transition between discrete states should therefore constitute a finite mixture of the underlying basis distributions associated with the individual discrete activation states. The mixture proportion will depend on the relation between the priming interval and the distribution of state-transition times. Continuous activation models assert instead that activation grows continuously over time and that there is a unique reaction-time distribution associated with any given degree of intermediate priming. Such models predict that no finite mixture distribution will emerge when the priming interval has a fixed intermediate duration. Two experiments with the adaptive priming procedure are reported to test these alternative predictions. In Experiment 1, the prime and test stimuli were semantically associated words (e.g., bread-butter). In Experiment 2, episodic associations between the prime and test stimuli were established through paired associate learning. For both cases, the mixture prediction failed, and two-state discrete activation models were rejected.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Dynamics of activation in semantic and episodic memory.

Spreading-activation models for the structure of semantic and episodic memory postulate a network of interconnected nodes in which activation spreads from a source node to recipient nodes. These models account for a broad range of memory-related processes, including word recognition, sentence verification, prose comprehension, and sentence production. A fundamental question regarding this account concerns the nature of activation growth at each node in the network. Two mutually exclusive possibilities are (a) that activation grows in a discrete fashion, making abrupt transitions between two or more distinct states and (b) that activation grows continuously from a resting level to an asymptotic level. In the present article, we characterize this dichotomy with examples from the literature, and we apply an adaptive priming procedure for testing discrete versus continuous activation models. Our procedure involves the presentation of prime stimuli at various moments before a test stimulus; subjects are required to make a lexical (word/nonword) decision about the test stimulus. The duration of the interval between the prime and test stimuli is varied adaptively on the basis of subjects' performance. Reaction times are recorded as a function of this duration. According to discrete activation models, there is a unique reaction-time distribution associated with each possible state of node activation. The distribution of reaction times observed when the test stimulus appears near the moment of transition between discrete states should therefore constitute a finite mixture of the underlying basis distributions associated with the individual discrete activation states. The mixture proportion will depend on the relation between the priming interval and the distribution of state-transition times. Continuous activation models assert instead that activation grows continuously over time and that there is a unique reaction-time distribution associated with any given degree of intermediate priming. Such models predict that no finite mixture distribution will emerge when the priming interval has a fixed intermediate duration. Two experiments with the adaptive priming procedure are reported to test these alternative predictions. In Experiment 1, the prime and test stimuli were semantically associated words (e.g., bread-butter). In Experiment 2, episodic associations between the prime and test stimuli were established through paired associate learning. For both cases, the mixture prediction failed, and two-state discrete activation models were rejected.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Literacy as Multidimensional: Locating Information and Reading Comprehension

A contrast is proposed between the two literacy constructs of reading comprehension and locating information in text. A pragmatic approach to identifying important classes of literacy tasks reveals that locating information is prevalent in school and work. This process is a form of strategic reading that differs from reading comprehension or recall of prose by being more goal directed, more selective in the use of text, and less dependent on declarative knowledge. The process of locating text information requires: formulation of a goal, selection of a category of text for inspection, extraction of relevant details, and recycling to obtain solutions. Relationships of locating information in text to models of problem solving, studying, and reading comprehension are discussed and research implications are suggested.

Signals in Expository Prose: Effects on Reading Comprehension

THE AUTHORS examine the effects of three signal types on relatively sophisticated readers and their comprehension of technical expository prose. A signal is generally described as a word, phrase, or statement that preannounces content and/or reveals relationships in content. Previous studies have failed to show consistent effects for signals with good comprehenders. Approximately 300 college-level subjects (pre-engineering majors) read one of four passages and then answered questions examining detail information, superordinate information, and implicit relationships. The passages were of different lengths and reading levels and covered four technical topics (nitrates, corrosion, algae, and biomedical research). Eight versions of each passage were constructed through addition, deletion, and combination of the three signal types: (a) headings, (b) previews, and (c) logical connectives. The authors conclude from the results that all three signal types can enhance comprehension, but that such facilitation depends on passage length and difficulty. In this study, the passage that was most appropriately challenging for the readers, neither too easy nor too difficult, produced the clearest effect for signals.

Headings, Previews, Logical Connectives: Effects on Reading Comprehension

This article examines the effects of headings, previews, and logical connectives on readers and their comprehension of technical expository prose. Results from two related experiments suggest that previews produce significant effects on literal and inferential comprehension while the other two signal types do not. Results are discussed in light of previous research and suggestions for future research are given.

The cloze procedure and software comprehensibility measurement

Cloze tests (i.e. fill-in-missing-parts tests) have been a long-standing measure of prose comprehension. Through human-subject experimentation, evidence was gathered to support the practical advantages of using the cloze procedure for measuring software comprehension. Cloze tests were found to be easy to construct, administer, and score and to be capable of discriminating between programs of varying comprehensibility. However, discrepancies between multiple-choice comprehension quiz results and some cloze test results for the same software suggested that certain forms of software cloze tests may not be valid. A model of software cloze tests was developed to identify a software cloze test characteristic that may produce invalid results. The test characteristic was concerned with the relative proportion of `program-dependent' and `program-independent' cloze items within a test. The developed model was shown to be consistent with software cloze test results of another researcher and led to suggestions for improving software cloze testing.

THE EFFECTS OF VISUAL, VERBAL, AND MOTOR ELABORATIONS ON PRESCHOOL CHILDREN'S RECALL AND COMPREHENSION OF PROSE

This study examined the differential effect of dynamic (visual and motor) and static (visual and verbal) elaborations on preschool children's Immediate and delayed memory (recall of explicit content) and comprehension (recall of Implicit content) of prose. Eighty children, ages 3 1/2 to 5 1/2 years were randomly assigned to five treatment groups: 1) Read (R) condition ‐ unelaborated single reading of story; 2) Read‐Read (RR) condition ‐ two consecutive readings (static verbal elaboration); 3) Visual (S) condition ‐ story + observation of stationary representational props (static visual elaboration); 4) Experimenter‐Manipulate (E‐M) condition ‐ story + observation of experimenter manipulating props (dynamic visual elaboration); and 5) Subject‐Manipulate (S‐M) condition ‐ story + self manipulation of props (dynamic visual‐motor elaboration). As predicted, Ss In E‐M and S‐M conditions generally exhibited greater Immediate and delayed recall of both explicit and Implicit content than did Ss In the R condition...

Differences in the Standards Used by College Students to Evaluate Their Comprehension of Expository Prose

COLLEGE STUDENTS differing in verbal ability read and evaluated their comprehension of expository passages. Three different types of problems were embedded within the passages to provide opportunities for students to reveal the use of different standards of evaluation. Half of the subjects were informed that they should use three particular standards in order to identify the problems (lexical, external consistency, and internal consistency); the remaining subjects were not given specific information as to the standards they should use. All problems subjects identified, regardless of whether or not they were intentionally introduced, were classified as to the type of standard they reflected. The classification scheme consisted of the three targeted standards plus four others: syntax, propositional cohesiveness, structural cohesiveness, and informational completeness. Of particular concern were differences in the standards adopted by students receiving specific instructions and those receiving general instructions. Use of the lexical standard did not differ with instructional specificity, suggesting that students spontaneously evaluate their understanding of individual words. However, students receiving general instructions rarely used the external and internal consistency standards, suggesting these are not criteria students typically adopt. Instead, they commented frequently on the structural cohesiveness of the passages. Additionally, students with higher verbal ability exhibited more frequent and more varied standard use than those with lower verbal ability.

Continuity between childhood dyslexia and adult reading.

If reading disabilities were the result of developmental lags, disabled readers should catch up to their peers in proficiency at maturity. As a test of this hypothesis, current literacy skills were assessed for adults who did, and did not, have childhood reading disabilities. Contrary to the developmental lag hypothesis, most of the former group remained poor readers in adulthood, in many cases reading more than two standard deviations below levels predicted by IQ. Both within and between groups, very similar relationships were observed between reading level and: word recognition; phonic analysis; prose comprehension; reading speed; spelling ability and error types; and tolerance for visual and semantic text transformations. Other purported characteristics of dyslexia differentiated disabled from normal adult readers with only limited success. The results have implications for theoretical, methodological, and practical issues in the study of dyslexia in childhood as well as adulthood.

Prose Comprehension and Text Search as a Function of Reading Volume

INFORMAL INTERVIEWS and observations were used to obtain information regarding frequently occurring reading tasks among adults in work and leisure settings. Based on these data, two types of reading-text search and prose comprehension-were proposed. A two-stage information processing model for text search was developed and contrasted with prose comprehension models of reading. Background information, performance, and reading volume measures were obtained from a sample of 42 telephone company employees. Performance on text search and prose comprehension tests correlated at a relatively low level sharing only 10% of the variance, while time spent engaged in text search activities accounted for 32% of the variance with text search tasks and less than 1% of the variance with prose comprehension tasks. Similarly, time spent engaged in prose comprehension activities accounted for 45% of the variance with prose comprehension tasks and only 2% of the variance with text search tasks. These findings were interpreted as indicating that: a) there are reading competencies that can be measured independently; b) these competencies are distinguishable in terms of the goals and procedures of the reader; and c) activity as measured by time spent with material for a specific use is an important indicator of an individual's skill at performing associated tasks.

The Speed of Word Recognition Subprocesses and Reading Achievement in College Students

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN the speeds of word encoding, lexical access, semantic memory access processes, and reading achievement were investigated using college undergraduates as subjects. In Experiment 1 subjects made decisidns about pairs of words using visual, name, or semantic information. In Experiment 2, silbjects used semantic information to make categorical decisions about word or picture pairs. Reading achievement was measured for all subjects using the Nelson-Denny Reading Test and a prose comprehension task. The speed of word rec6gnition subprocesses accounted for significant proportions of the variance in reading achievement. However, reading achievement was most strongly related to the speed of semantic memory access for both words and pictures. These results suggest reading deficiencies may occur as a result of either slow semantic memory access speeds or a lack of organization of information in semantic memory.