What is COMPREHENSION ABILITY IN ADULT READERS ?

COMPREHENSION ABILITY IN ADULT READERS

A.    Introduction

Readers are trying to make sense ­­­­­­­­­of the ideas in three levels. First, at the word level, secondly, at the sentence level and finally at the discourse level. This chapter is focused on the comprehension performance of adult readers.

B.     Individual Differences in Word-Level Abilities

Some authors find that in beginning readers, word-identification is strongly related to measures of phonological awareness-explicit knowledge about the phonological structure of the language. The three tasks that are most commonly used to assess adult readers’ word-level abilities are: (1) naming (2) phonological decision (3) orthographic decision. Comprehension depends on the rapid retrieval of high-quality lexical codes during word recognition. Lexical code is high quality to the extent that: (a) it is specific-it has a fully specified orthographic representation – and (b) it is redundant-it has a representation that can be retrieved from both spoken language and from orthographic-to-phonological mapping.

C.    What Are The Status of Comprehension Problems for Poor Quality Representations?

Verbal efficiency theory holds that if readers recover low-quality lexical representations, then “down-stream” processes that depend on high-quality codes will be affected. Participants to read short-passages containing a sentence that ended with a homograph prime and respond to lexical-decision targets. Long et al. (1997) investigate three variables: (1) readers’ structural (propositional) representations of sentence, (2) their representation of context-appropriate senses of ambiguous word, and (3) their representation of topic-related information. Good and poor comprehenders showed differences in (a) their ability to integrate information from different parts of story and (b) their ability to elaborate their representations with topic-related information.

D.    Do Comprehension Problems Relate to Slow Word-Level Processing?

Verbal efficiency theory is that slow word-level processes can consume resources that would otherwise be devoted to higher-level interpretive ones. The initial step in constructing the multilevel model was to analyze the level-1 data. The researches used three text characteristics in the analysis: (a) number of function words (b) number of new argument nouns (c) number of repeated argument nouns. The second step was to identify the latent variable structure for the level-2 variables, measured at the participant level. The final step in the analysis was to regress the level-1 coefficients on the five individual-differences factors (level-2 latent variables). This study produced two important findings: (1) word-decoding speed was a unique predictor of sentence processing, whereas word-decoding accuracy was unrelated to performance. (2) WM capacity was not a reliable predictor of any level-1 coefficient. Slow word-level processing appears to be predictive of reading comprehension, independent of other factors such as general verbal ability and WM capacity.

E.     Individual Differences in Working Memory

Successful performance requires the ready availability of (a) task goals, (b) task-relevant information, and (c) the intermediate results of cognitive operations. WM is the theoretical construct used to refer to the system that is responsible for maintaining such information. To assess WM capacity, researches commonly used two measures: (a) the reading-span task and (b) the operation-span task. The role of WM in reading comprehension has been important in theoretical debates about the nature of WM and its limitations.

1.      Limitations Due to Capacity Constraints

a.      The Capacity Theory of Comprehension

The storage and processing functions necessary for language are fueled by activation, a commodity that maintains knowledge elements in memory and supports computation. Studies that examined the relation between WM and discourse-level processes have found similar results. For example, (a) high-span readers, compared to low-span, are more accurate in finding the antecedent of a pronoun when the pronoun and its antecedent are separated by intervening sentences. Capacity theory emphasizes the role of WM in comprehension. Capacity limitations should have direct effects on all comprehension processes, but these effects should be particularly strong for resource-consuming, sentence-level and discourse-level processes.

b.      Separate-Sentence-Interpretation-Resource (SSIR) Theory

(1)               One part of the WM system is specialized for analyzing syntactic structure and using it to determine sentence meaning. (2) Another part of the system is devoted to activities that involve conscious controlled processing, activities that call “post-interpretive.” The foundation of The SSIR theory lies in neuropsychological data which concern the ability of patients to understand sentences containing complex syntactic structures. The SSIR theory is similar to the capacity theory in attributing individual differences at the discourse level to a limited capacity WM system. The SSIR theory predicts a strong relation between WM capacity and discourse-level processing.

2.      Limitations Due to Poor Word-Level Ability and Insufficient Experience

Represented in two models of WM: a connectionist-based account and the long-term working memory (LTWM) model. Two accounts differ in many respects, but both emphasize the importance of skill and experience in the relation between capacity and comprehension performance.

a.      The Connectionist-Based Account

The connectionist-based account of variation in WM is based on connectionist approach to language processing. The connectionist-based account, individual differences in performance on WM tasks arise from variation in two factors. (1) Individuals can vary with respect to basic sensory/perceptual abilities, primarily the ability to represent phonological information accurately. (2) Individuals can vary in reading experience. Readers’ use of implicit causality depended on important characteristics of both the reader and the stimuli.

b.      The Long-Term Working Memory (LTWM) Model

The amount of information that can be actively maintained in LTWM is not limited by a fixed capacity for encoding and retrieving information from long-term memory that meet the demands of the task. For example, chess experts show superior WM for meaningful configurations of chess pieces, but not for random configurations. The LTWM model emphasizes the role of print exposure in text comprehension. This system is involved in the performance of novel tasks, it plays little role in the performance of skilled activities, such as reading comprehension.

F.     Individual Differences in Suppression Ability

Suppression ability (also called cognitive inhibition) is an individual’s skill at ignoring or inhibiting distracting information and overcoming interference from a powerful response. Suppression reduces the inference from such information by dampening its activation. Suppression diminished activation of the traces when their content is unrelated to the structure. Suppression is a strategic process.

G.    Individual Differences in Print Exposure

Readers differ greatly (a) in their enthusiasm for reading, (b) in how much they value it, and (c) in the time they spend engaged in the activity. Comprehension skill is likely influenced by print exposure in at least three ways: (1) Individuals who read often are more likely to learn about rare words than are individuals who read seldom (2) Individuals are more likely to encounter complex syntactic structures in print than in speech (3) Finally, individuals who read often are likely to acquire more world knowledge than individuals who read seldom.

H.    Individual Differences in Background Knowledge

Two different paradigms have well documented the comprehension advantage related to background knowledge. First paradigm, participants read texts that contain numerous vague referring expressions. Second paradigm, participants read coherent texts that contain information about a specific domain. Long and Prat (2002) used a recognition-memory paradigm to examine qualitative differences in high-knowledge and low-knowledge readers’ text representations. The role of background knowledge in comprehension is emphasized in the LTWM model and in research on individual differences in print exposure. Background knowledge is essential for building retrieval structures in LTWM that expand the reader’s ability to hold large amounts of information in an accessible form. Background knowledge is facilitated by print exposure. Individuals who read often are exposed to more information about the world than are individuals who read seldom and they are more likely to create coherent discourse models that expand their knowledge base. 

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