Inferential Questioning: Effects on Comprehension of Narrative Texts as a Function of Grade and Timing

In this study, we investigated the effects of inferential questioning, and of the timing of such questioning, on narrative comprehension by 4th-, 7th-, and lOth-grade students and college students. Students received questions either during or after reading simple narrative texts. Control groups read the texts without questions. Questioning, particularly during reading, interfered with the youngest students' recall both of text information in general and of information specifically targeted by the questions. Questioning facilitated college students' memory but only for information specifically targeted by the questions and only when questioning occurred during reading. As reading and language skills become more proficient and automatic, inferential questioning increasingly directs readers' attention during reading to the information targeted by the questions. In addition, inferential questioning challenges the processing capacities of younger or less skilled readers and, hence, may interfere with comprehension.

[1]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  Question asking and answering. , 1994 .

[2]  Ann L. Brown,et al.  Reciprocal Teaching of Comprehension-Fostering and Comprehension-Monitoring Activities , 1984 .

[3]  Douglas J. Hacker,et al.  Metacognition in educational theory and practice. , 1998 .

[4]  P. Broek,et al.  The Landscape model of reading: Inferences and the online construction of memory representation. , 1999 .

[5]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  Structures and Procedures of Implicit Knowledge , 1985 .

[6]  A. Graesser,et al.  The Psychology of Questions , 1985 .

[7]  W. Kintsch.  The role of knowledge in discourse comprehension: a construction-integration model. , 1988, Psychological review.

[8]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Toward a model of text comprehension and production. , 1978 .

[9]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  QUEST: A cognitive model of question answering , 1990 .

[10]  P. Broek,et al.  The role of readers' standards for coherence in the generation of inferences during reading. , 1995 .

[11]  M. A. Casteel.  Effects of Inference Necessity and Reading Goal on Children's Inferential Generation. , 1993 .

[12]  Michael Pressley,et al.  Elaborative-interrogation effects depend on the nature of the question. , 1991 .

[13]  Charles R. Fletcher,et al.  Second Language Readers' Memory for Narrative Texts: Evidence for Structure‐Preserving Top‐Down Processing , 1993 .

[14]  P. David Pearson,et al.  Increasing Students’ Awareness of Sources of Information for Answering Questions , 1985 .

[15]  C. Wolman.  Sensitivity to Causal Cohesion in Stories by Children with Mild Mental Retardation, Children with Learning Disabilities, and Children without Disabilities , 1991 .

[16]  Elizabeth B. Bernhardt,et al.  Learning and comprehension of text , 1988 .

[17]  T. Trabasso,et al.  Logical necessity and transitivity of causal relations in stories , 1989 .

[18]  T. Trabasso.  Causal Cohesion and Story Coherence. , 1982 .

[19]  Arthur C. Graesser,et al.  Models of Understanding Text , 1996 .

[20]  Paul van den Broek,et al.  Discovering the cement of the universe: The development of event comprehension from childhood to adulthood. , 1997 .

[21]  J. M. Golding,et al.  A test of the on-line status of goal-related inferences , 1992 .

[22]  L. Siegel,et al.  The role of question type and reading ability in reading comprehension , 1994 .

[23]  H. Oostendorp,et al.  The Construction of Mental Representations During Reading , 1998 .

[24]  R. Dean,et al.  Interspersed Postpassage Questions and Reading Comprehension Achievement. , 1986 .

[25]  P. Broek.  Comprehension and memory of narrative texts: Inferences and coherence. , 1994 .

[26]  Michael Pressley,et al.  Educational Psychology: Learning, Instruction, Assessment , 1996 .

[27]  M. McDaniel,et al.  Generation and precision of elaboration: Effects on intentional and incidental learning. , 1987 .

[28]  T. Trabasso,et al.  Understanding text: Achieving explanatory coherence through on‐line inferences and mental operations in working memory , 1993 .

[29]  Joanna P. Williams.  Comprehension of students with and without learning disabilities: Identification of narrative themes and idiosyncratic text representations. , 1993 .

[30]  J. Deloache,et al.  The effect of questioning on young children's memory for an event , 1995 .

[31]  Yukie Horiba.  Narrative Comprehension Processes: A Study of Native and Non-Native Readers of Japanese. , 1990 .

[32]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Flexibility in text processing: A strategy competition model , 1990 .

[33]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Memory and cognition , 1977 .

[34]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Extending capacity-constrained construction integration: Toward "smarter" and flexible models of text comprehension , 1996 .

[35]  S. Jay Samuels,et al.  Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading , 1974 .

[36]  P. van den Broek,et al.  Effects of Causal Structure on Immediate and Delayed Story Recall by Children with Mild Mental Retardation, Children with Learning Disabilities, and Children without Disabilities , 1997 .

[37]  Douglas J. Hacker,et al.  Self-regulated comprehension during normal reading. , 1998 .

[38]  B. A. Smith,et al.  PREADJUNCT QUESTIONS AS A LEARNING STRATEGY FOR OLDER ADULTS: HELP OR HINDRANCE? , 1993 .

[39]  P. Broek.  The effects of causal relations and hierarchical position on the importance of story statements , 1988 .

[40]  Gloria E. Miller,et al.  Picture versus question elaboration on young children's learning of sentences containing high- and low-probability content. , 1989, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[41]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Strategies of discourse comprehension , 1983 .

[42]  E. J. O'Brien,et al.  The role of causal connections in the retrieval of text , 1987, Memory & cognition.

[43]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Memory for embedded and sequential story structures , 1986 .

[44]  Gregory Barker,et al.  Answering Questions about Expository Texts. , 1996 .

[45]  C. Fletcher,et al.  An on-line assessment of causal reasoning during comprehension , 1990, Memory & cognition.

[46]  Michelle Gaddy Everson,et al.  Effects of Causal Text Revisions on More- and Less-Skilled Readers' Comprehension of Easy and Difficult Texts , 2000 .