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- Title
The effect of practice and expectancy of inferential questions on poor comprehenders' inferential processing and monitoring.
- Authors
Yeari, Menahem; Avramovich, Adi
- Abstract
Background: Previous studies have shown that undergraduates improve their answering and monitoring accuracy when they exclusively practice and expect inferential questions after reading. This study examined whether children with poor comprehension, who struggle particularly with inferential questions, would benefit from similar practice with and without feedback. Methods: To address this question, 44 poor comprehenders and 44 control participants from 6th–9th grades practiced answering literal or inferential questions after reading each of three texts. They were also asked to predict their success in these questions, whereas some received feedback on their prediction (monitoring) accuracy. Then, participants read an additional three texts, but answered both practiced and unpracticed types of questions after reading all texts. They also predicted their success after reading each text. Results: Both poor and good comprehenders answered literal questions more accurately when they had practiced. However, only good comprehenders improved their answering of inferential questions when they had practiced. No differences were found between the groups in monitoring accuracy. Feedback had a positive effect on answering accuracy, irrespective of practice. Conclusions: Poor comprehenders differentiate to some extent between literal and inferential questions and are flexible enough to execute a different text processing plan for each type of questions. However, they presumably lack the knowledge and/or resources to execute inferential processing efficiently during reading. Moreover, all children seem to have difficulty with comprehension monitoring. Practicing and/or expecting one type of questions, with or without feedback, is insufficient for improving this ability. Highlights: What is already known about this topic Undergraduate students improve their answering accuracy when they practice and expect one type of questions – literal or inferential – after reading.Similar improvement is exhibited in predicting the number of questions they expect to answer correctly after reading.These findings suggest that undergraduate students can successfully adjust their text processing and comprehension monitoring according to the questions they expect to answer.What this paper adds Children with good comprehension can similarly improve their answering accuracy after reading, following a short practice with one type of questions.Children with poor comprehension can improve their answering accuracy following a similar practice only for literal, but not for inferential questions.Both good and poor comprehender children have difficulties in adjusting their comprehension monitoring according to the type of questions they expect, even when they receive feedback on their monitoring performance.Implications for theory, policy or practice Short practice that includes exclusive answering of inferential questions is sufficient to improve inferential processing of texts by children with good comprehension.The same practice is sufficient for children with poor comprehension to differentiate between literal and inferential questions, to the extent of executing a different text processing plan for each type of questions.Children with poor comprehension require more extensive and/or informative practice to execute inferential processing efficiently during reading.
- Subjects
READING comprehension; UNDERGRADUATES; LANGUAGE arts; CRITICAL literacy; ENGAGED reading
- Publication
Journal of Research in Reading, 2023, Vol 46, Issue 1, p22
- ISSN
0141-0423
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/1467-9817.12412