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Developmental differences in sensitivity to semantic relations among good and poor comprehenders: evidence from
1Department of Psychology, University of York, UK. k.nation@psych.york.ac.uk
Cognition
|April 8, 1999
Summary
Children with poor reading comprehension struggle with abstract semantic relations, especially for category words unless they are highly associated. Good readers show consistent semantic priming regardless of word association strength.
Area of Science:
- Developmental Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Linguistics
Background:
- Semantic priming reveals how word meanings are organized and accessed in the mind.
- Understanding semantic relations is crucial for reading comprehension development.
- Children's ability to grasp abstract concepts develops over time.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate semantic priming in children with varying reading comprehension skills.
- To examine how category and function word relations affect semantic priming.
- To explore the role of lexical association strength in semantic priming for children.
Main Methods:
- Assessed semantic priming using category coordinates (e.g., CAT-DOG) and function-related words (e.g., BROOM-FLOOR).
- Compared children with good and poor reading comprehension, matched for decoding ability.
- Manipulated lexical association strength between prime-target word pairs.
Main Results:
- Both groups showed priming for function-related words.
- Poor comprehenders only showed priming for category words if they were highly associated.
- Good comprehenders demonstrated priming for category words regardless of association strength.
Conclusions:
- Children's abstract semantic knowledge develops from event-based understanding.
- Poor comprehenders are less sensitive to abstract semantic relations without explicit co-occurrence.
- Reading comprehension is linked to the ability to process abstract semantic networks.