The role of two reading strategies in text comprehension: An eye fixation study in primary school children

This study examined whether 10–12‐year‐old children use two reading strategies to aid their text comprehension: (1) distinguishing between important and unimportant words; and (2) resolving anaphoric references. Of interest was the question to what extent use of these reading strategies was predicti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of research in reading 2008-05, Vol.31 (2), p.203-223
Main Authors: Van Der Schoot, Menno, Vasbinder, Alain L., Horsley, Tako M., Van Lieshout, Ernest C.D.M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decoding (Reading)
Elementary School Students
Eye Movements
Human Body
Reading Comprehension
Reading Skills
Reading Strategies
Vocabulary
Word Recognition
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Summary:This study examined whether 10–12‐year‐old children use two reading strategies to aid their text comprehension: (1) distinguishing between important and unimportant words; and (2) resolving anaphoric references. Of interest was the question to what extent use of these reading strategies was predictive of reading comprehension skill over and above decoding skill and vocabulary. Reading strategy use was examined by the recording of eye fixations on specific target words. In contrast to less successful comprehenders, more successful comprehenders invested more processing time in important than in unimportant words. On the other hand, they needed less time to determine the antecedent of an anaphor. The results suggest that more successful comprehenders build a more effective mental model of the text than less successful comprehenders in at least two ways. First, they allocate more attention to the incorporation of goal‐relevant than goal‐irrelevant information into the model. Second, they ascertain that the text model is coherent and richly connected.
ISSN:0141-0423
1467-9817
DOI:10.1111/j.1467-9817.2007.00354.x