Monitoring of Passage Inconsistency among Poor Comprehenders: A Preliminary Test of the “Piecemeal Processing” Explanation

AbstractPoor comprehenders from grades five and six were asked to read and rate the comprehensibility of three short passages: one informationally consistent, one informationally inconsistent, and one containing polysyllabic modifying words. Subjects were asked to indicate why passages rated as not readily comprehensible were difficult. The poor comprehenders rated informationally consistent and informationally inconsistent passages as equally comprehensible, but rated modifying word passages as much less comprehensible. They referred to long words, difficult words, and unfamiliar words within these passages as sources of difficulty. This focus on long words within sentences, rather than on inconsistent information across sentences, provides support for the hypothesis that poor comprehenders process print in piecemeal fashion.