We examined the quality of 4‐ to 6‐year‐olds' production of narratives from picture sequences. Children (N = 81) first viewed a narrative picture sequence and then completed the narrative production ...task in each of two orders: either before or after answering a set of questions about the core elements of the story. Narratives elicited after questions were more coherent than those produced before the questions. In contrast, task order did not influence the cohesion of narratives nor the accuracy of responses to questions. An independent measure of memory was related to the gains in narrative coherence after answering questions. The results are discussed in relation to the role of questions as a guide to the structural elements of a narrative and a scaffold for understanding.
The twofold purpose of this meta-analysis was to determine the relative importance of decoding skills to reading comprehension in reading development and to identify which reader characteristics and ...reading assessment characteristics contribute to differences in the decoding and reading comprehension correlation. A meta-analysis of 110 studies found a sizeable average corrected correlation (r̄c = .74). Two reader characteristics (age and listening comprehension level) were significant moderators of the relationship. Several assessment characteristics were significant moderators, particularly for young readers: the way that decoding was measured and, with respect to the reading comprehension assessment, text genre; whether or not help was provided with decoding; and whether or not the texts were read aloud. Age and measure of decoding were the strongest moderators. We discuss the implications of these findings for assessment and the diagnosis of reading difficulties.
Background
Comprehension is critical for classroom learning and educational success. Inferences are integral to good comprehension: successful comprehension requires the listener to generate local ...coherence inferences, which involve integrating information between clauses, and global coherence inferences, which involve integrating textual information with background knowledge to infer motivations, themes, etc. A central priority for the diagnosis of comprehension difficulties and our understanding of why these difficulties arise is the development of valid assessment instruments.
Aims
We explored typically developing children's ability to make local and global coherence inferences using a novel assessment of listening comprehension. The aims were to determine whether children were more likely to make the target inferences when these were asked during story presentation versus after presentation of the story, and whether there were any age differences between conditions.
Methods & Procedures
Children in Years 3 (n = 29) and 5 (n = 31) listened to short stories presented either in a segmented format, in which questions to assess local and global coherence inferences were asked at specific points during story presentation, or in a whole format, when all the questions were asked after the story had been presented.
Outcomes & Results
There was developmental progression between age groups for both types of inference question. Children also scored higher on the global coherence inference questions than the local coherence inference questions. There was a benefit of the segmented format for younger children, particularly for the local inference questions.
Conclusions & Implications
The results suggest that children are more likely to make target inferences if prompted during presentation of the story, and that this format is particularly facilitative for younger children and for local coherence inferences. This has implications for the design of comprehension assessments as well as for supporting children with comprehension difficulties in the classroom.
This systematic review and meta-analysis examined the association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, taking into account critical factors that could affect its strength. ...Following NIRO guidelines, we included 44 studies involving 63 independent samples, and 126 correlations between morphological awareness and reading comprehension. Overall, we found a significant association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension (r = 0.565), but also large heterogeneity (81.37%), supporting the need for analysis of potential moderators: age, type of morphologically complex word, characteristics of morphological awareness and reading comprehension tests were examined. We found that type of morphologically complex word was the only significant moderator of this association. In sum, we have demonstrated that morphological awareness influences reading comprehension across a wide age range. Implications for educational practice, as well as recommendations that future studies report more detailed information about participants and measures, are discussed.
•Morphological awareness (MA) and reading comprehension (RC) were examined.•MA and RC were significantly associated for 6- to 16-year-olds.•Inflectional and derivational MA was most strongly related to RC.•MA tests vary in presentation modality.•A lack of research contrasting real and pseudoword stimuli was noted.
We examined the relationship between inference making, vocabulary knowledge, and verbal working memory on children’s reading comprehension in 62 6th graders (aged 12). The effect of vocabulary ...knowledge on reading comprehension was predicted to be partly mediated by inference making for two reasons: Inference making often taps the semantic relations among words, and the precise word meanings in texts are selected by readers on the basis of context. All independent variables were significantly and moderately correlated with reading comprehension. In support of our prediction, the link between vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension was significantly mediated by inference making even when verbal working memory was controlled. An alternative mediation hypothesis (vocabulary as a mediator of the effect of inference making on comprehension) was not supported by the data. The study replicates and extends the findings of earlier work (Cromley & Azevedo,
2007
; Segers & Verhoeven,
2016
; Ahmed et al.,
2016
).
Anthropomorphised animals are a prevalent character type in children’s books. However, stories with fantastical protagonists are associated with poorer social learning than those with human ...protagonists. We explored whether children’s representations of characters’ internal states and dialogue in story retells were related to story character realism (anthropomorphised animal, human), story theme (sharing, busyness), age, and vocabulary. Three- to seven-year-olds (N = 171) listened to one of four versions of an illustrated storybook that manipulated character realism and theme. Developmental trends were evident: Older children included more internal state references and dialogue in their retells than younger children. Of note, children retelling a prosocial story with human protagonists included more socio-relational language than those retelling a busy-themed story featuring humans; the same advantage was not evident for stories with animal protagonists. These findings imply that realistic protagonists may elicit more robust representations of social ideas in the minds of young children.
●Children heard stories that varied by character realism and prosocial theme.●Retells were examined for the inclusion for characters’ internal states and dialogue.●Prosocial theme with human protagonists elicited more socio-relational language.●Animal characters appear to elicit less robust representations of social ideas.●Prosocial stories about humans may deliver prosocial messages more reliably.
•Children heard stories that varied by character realism and moral theme inclusion.•Prosocial response was measured using a sticker donation task.•Children who were more aware of human internal ...states were more likely to share.•A human sharing story was no more influential on donation than the other stories.•Zero-inflated models suggest a predisposition towards not sharing in some children.
Previous research has suggested that moral stories depicting realistic characters may better facilitate children’s prosocial behavior than those containing anthropomorphized animal characters. The current study is a conceptual replication with a different sample and an extended age range. We examined the relationships among story character realism (anthropomorphized animal or human), theme (sharing or busyness), age, and prosocial behavior (i.e., resource allocation). Four versions of an illustrated storybook were created: an Animal Sharing book, an Animal Busy book, a Human Sharing book, and a Human Busy book. A total of 179 children aged 3–7 years listened to one of the four versions of the story. Children’s sticker donating behavior was measured prior to hearing the story and again following a story recall task. All groups donated more stickers post-story than pre-story. Younger children were more likely to increase their donation than older children, and children who had made higher human internal state attributions in a previous experimental session donated more stickers post-story. In contrast to previous research, we found that a sharing-themed narrative depicting human characters was no more influential for sticker donation than the other stories.
The present study investigated 3- to 7-year-olds' (N = 91) comprehension of two-clause sentences containing the temporal connectives before or after. The youngest children used an order of mention ...strategy to interpret the relation between clauses: They were more accurate when the presentation order matched the chronological order of events: "He ate his lunch, before he played in the garden" (chronological) versus "Before he played in the garden, he ate his lunch" (reverse). Between 4 and 6 years, performance was influenced by a combination of factors that influenced processing load: connective type and presentation order. An independent measure of working memory was predictive of performance. The study concludes that the memory demands of some sentence structures limits young children's comprehension of sentences containing temporal connectives.
PDF
