Prompt children's underspecified inference responses to reveal their comprehension potential and model the standard of coherence required¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 2 claims (2 for) · 2 studies (2 associational), q2–q3 · 0 of 2 report an effect size · 2 claims rest on one study

Description¶

The article draws an educational implication from its finding that performance improved after prompting for all age groups on both inference types. Prompting underspecified or vague answers, by repeating the question or asking the child to be more specific, is described as "a useful means to demonstrate a child's potential (or competence)" and as a tool to indicate the standard of coherence required of comprehension. Teachers and assessors can use this during narrative comprehension activities.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• The child must have produced an incomplete or vague answer to an inference question, which the adult then prompts with a repetition of the question or encouragement to be more specific

Constraints¶

• The article reports prompting within an individual assessment context with stories read aloud; it does not report classroom implementation

Target Learners¶

• Children aged 5 to 10 years during listening comprehension of narrative text

Target Learning Goals¶

• Generating local and global coherence inferences and demonstrating full comprehension potential

Claims¶

• Prompting underspecified responses improves children's performance on both local and global coherence inference questions at all ages [+M]
• When explicitly required by direct questions, less skilled comprehenders' inference performance improves greatly while skilled comprehenders perform at ceiling [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Making Inferences

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Currie, N. K., & Cain, K. (2015). Children's inference generation: The role of vocabulary and working memory. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 137, 57–75. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.03.005