Marie-France Ehrlich

Processing of anaphoric devices in young skilled and less skilled comprehenders: Differences in metacognitive monitoring.

This experiment investigated metacognitive monitoring in the processing of anaphors in 10–year-old skilled and less skilled comprehenders. Two tasks were used with expository texts. The direct self-evaluation task was carried out with consistent texts in which target anaphors were either repeated noun phrases or pronouns. Subjects had to read and to evaluate their own comprehension on a 6–point scale. After reading, subjects answered multiple-choice questions designed to test the processing of anaphors. In the inconsistency detection task, target anaphors were either repeated noun phrases or inconsistent noun phrases. Subjects had to read and detect inconsistencies. After reading, they answered multiple-choice questions. In both tasks, on-line measures (reading times for units containing target anaphors and for subsequent units, and look-backs) were collected in addition to off-line measures (ratings of comprehension, detection of inconsistencies and response to multiple-choice questions) in order to analyse indicators of implicit and explicit evaluation and revision activities. The results from the two tasks converged: less skilled comprehenders showed deficiencies in monitoring on measures of implicit and explicit evaluation and revision. Patterns of reading times revealed that less skilled comprehenders were sensitive to the difficulties in processing pronouns in the self-evaluation task and also sensitive to the lack of text cohesion in the inconsistency detection task. However, this sensitivity was weak and unable to trigger explicit activities. These results were interpreted in the framework of Karmiloff-Smiths (1986) model.

Cognitive and Motivational Determinants of Reading Comprehension in Good and Poor Readers

Cognitive, metacognitive, and motivational factors were examined as predictors of individual differences in the reading comprehension abilities of good and poor readers. Two hundred twenty seventh graders were measured on reading comprehension, and the top 30% and bottom 30% were identified as good and poor readers, respectively. Subjects were then measured on word recognition, metacognitive knowledge about text processing, perceived competence, and attributional beliefs about the reasons underlying academic outcomes. The results indicated that good readers in comparison to poor readers scored higher on the word recognition measure, possessed richer metacognitive knowledge, and had more positive beliefs about their academic abilities. Regression analyses indicated that word recognition and metacognition predicted reading comprehension in the whole sample; however, regression analyses within subgroups indicated that word recognition was the most important predictor variable for poor readers, whereas perceived competence predicted the reading comprehension abilities of good readers.

Levels of Representation and Domain-Specific Knowledge in Comprehension of Scientific Texts.

Abstract Two levels of representation in text comprehension were postulated: a propositional representation and a mental (or situation) model of the content of the text. An experiment tested the assumption that the role of domain-specific knowledge on comprehension takes place at the level of the mental model. Two groups of experts and novices in the domain of memory read two sets of texts on memory and physics. Reading was interrupted by paraphrase and inference questions presented 0, 2 or 4 sentences after the critical information. Response times analysis for memory texts showed that experts were faster than novices for inferences, whereas no difference was observed for paraphrases. Experts were also faster when the distance increased. No difference between groups was observed for the physics texts. These results tend to indicate that performance differences attributable to domain-specific knowledge reflect differences in the construction of the mental model.

Working memory and aging: Deficit or strategy differences?

Abstract Thirty young and 30 older subjects were administered a reading comprehension test and a working memory test involving processing of acceptable and incongruous sentences with an increasing mnemonic preload. the complexity of incongruous sentences was assumed to solicit the processing component of working memory, whereas the size of the mnemonic preload was assumed to solicit its storage component. Results suggested not only reduced working memory capacity in older subjects, but also a change in their strategies relative to both the sentence processing/word recall and the speed/accuracy trade-offs: Older subjects favored sentence processing to the detriment of word recall, and a subset of them favored accuracy to the detriment of speed when the memory load was heavy. This change of strategy was reflected by the pattern of correlations between working memory measures and reading comprehension scores, in that the best comprehension scores were reached by the fastest young subjects, but by the most ac...

Working-memory capacity and reading comprehension in young and older adults

SummaryThis study investigates the role of working-memory capacity in reading comprehension in young and older subjects. A task yielding separate measures for processing and storage components was used to assess working-memory capacity. A French version of the Nelson-Denny test was administered as a measure of abilities that underlie reading comprehension. In the working-memory task, recall performances were lower in older subjects. Nevertheless, the intercorrelations suggested that the age-related impairment was probably linked to the processing component. Mean scores on the reading-comprehension test did not differ between groups. However, scores were correlated with processing time on the working-memory task in younger subjects, but with storage capacity in older subjects.

Working memory in older subjects: dealing with ongoing and stored information in language comprehension.

The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the role of aging in working memory (WM), or at least the part involved in language comprehension, e.g., a double function of processing the ongoing information and keeping in memory the product of this processing. Young and older subjects were asked to simultaneously detect incongruities in sentences and keep increasing longer series of words (3, 4, or 5) in memory. The difficulty of incongruity detection was manipulated by variation of the number of intervening words (0, 6, or 12) between two critical words. Incongruity detection was assumed to be linked to the processing of information function of working memory. The concurrent mnemonic load consisted of material previously processed, and was assumed to be linked to the storage function of WM. Results showed that an increment in incongruity-detection difficulty led to a greater decrement in accuracy in older than in young subjects, indicating an impairment in the information-processing function. On the other hand, an increment in concurrent mnemonic load led to a slightly smaller decrement in accuracy in older subjects. Furthermore, fewer words from this mnemonic load were recalled in older subjects. It is suggested that older subjects are impaired in coping with both requirements of the task, and tend to sacrifice the storage of information recently processed to devote their resources to the immediate processing component of the task. These results are discussed in relation to their implications for language comprehension.

The processing of cohesion devices in text comprehension

SummaryThe cognitive operations involved in the processing of surface-cohesion devices for the construction of a coherent mental representation is a major issue in text comprehension. An experiment was carried out with two narratives presented in two versions: a high-cohesion version and a low-cohesion version derived from the high version with the use of several devices — two anaphoric markers, changes in the temporal connective and word order, omission of the thematic sentence - without modification of the text content. The subjects read and immediately recalled a high-cohesion text and a low-cohesion text. The results showed that lowering cohesion produced an insignificant increase (8%) in reading time, but a highly significant decrease (25%) in recall performance. It appears that the subjects did not execute the processing required by the cohesion devices. The results are discussed with respect to models of sentence comprehension in comparison with text comprehension and metacognitive aspects of reading comprehension.