Less skilled comprehenders make fewer knowledge-based coherence and elaborative inferences than skilled comprehenders even when the relevant knowledge is equally available¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · associational r2 · q2
Currency · newest study 2001 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Skilled comprehenders made more inferences in general than less skilled comprehenders when knowledge-base recall was conditionalized, with no significant effect of inference type and no interaction. → Kate Cain 2001

Evidence¶

Kate Cain 2001¶

Kate Cain, Jane V. Oakhill, Marcia A. Barnes, and Peter E. Bryant. (2001). Comprehension skill, inference-making ability, and their relation to knowledge. Memory & Cognition, 29(6), 850-859. https://doi.org/10.3758/bf03196414

q2 · i? · associational · r2

Experiment with 13 skilled and 13 less skilled 7- to 8-year-old comprehenders matched for word reading; proportional inference scores were analyzed in a two-way ANOVA. The article reports "a main effect of skill group" with F(1,24) = 12.31, p < .002; effect sizes of 1.3 and 0.96 were calculated for coherence and elaborative inferences.

"There was a main effect of skill group because the skilled comprehenders made more inferences in general than the less skilled comprehenders did [F(1,24) = 12.31, p < .002]."

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Inferencing — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• When explicitly required by direct questions, less skilled comprehenders' inference performance improves greatly while skilled comprehenders perform at ceiling — related
• Skilled comprehenders recall more literal story content than less skilled comprehenders, but the groups do not differ significantly in interpreting novel similes — related
• Less skilled comprehenders' inference failures stem more from incorrect premise recall, whereas skilled comprehenders fail more at integrating recalled information — related
• Incorrect inference generation is more common for elaborative than for coherence inference failures, indicating children are less aware which information is relevant for elaborative inferences — related
• Skilled comprehenders show superior one-week retention of a taught knowledge base despite comparable immediate recall — related
• The comprehension-skill difference in inference making persists after controlling for memory for the text and delayed retention of the knowledge base — related
• Inference-making performance improves with age between 6 and 10 years, with children performing better on global than local coherence inference questions — related
• Low-skilled readers with strong background knowledge partially compensate for poor reading skill at the textbase level but not for inferencing — related