Inferential Processing among Adequate and Struggling Adolescent Comprehenders and Relations to Reading Comprehension

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Text consistency judgments are crucial for reading comprehension.
• Understanding how textual distance impacts these judgments is key for educational interventions.
• Growth in text integration skills varies among student readers.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the effect of textual distance on text consistency judgment accuracy and speed.
• To investigate the relationship between text consistency judgment accuracy and reading comprehension.
• To analyze developmental trends in these skills from grades 6-12.

Main Methods:

• Mixed model analyses of variance (ANOVA) were used to assess accuracy and speed.
• Multiple regressions determined the unique contribution of consistency judgments to comprehension.
• Data were collected from 1203 students across grades 6-12.

Main Results:

• Significant growth in text integration, particularly for local coherence, was observed across grades.
• Adequate comprehenders showed more pronounced development in these skills.
• Accuracy in text consistency judgments uniquely predicted passage-level comprehension, but not sentence-level comprehension.

Conclusions:

• Reading comprehension skills, especially text integration for local coherence, develop substantially through middle and high school.
• Accurate text consistency judgments are important for understanding passages, particularly for proficient readers.
• Educational strategies should consider the developmental trajectory of text integration skills.