Two experiments assessed the effects of text cohesion and schema availability on children's comprehension of social studies passages that varied in vocabulary difficulty. Free recall, summarization, and sentence verification measures were used. In the first experiment texts were prepared which varied in cohesion. No interactions between cohesion and vocabulary difficulty appeared, although main effects for vocabulary were found. In the second experiment, schema availability was manipulated by varying topic familiarity. Significant main effects for familiarity and vocabulary difficulty were found; however, the two factors did not interact. The results of the two experiments failed to support expectations based on an interactive theory of reading.
Effects of Vocabulary Difficulty, Text Cohesion and Schema Availability on Reading ComprehensionAn interactive theory of reading assumes that reading involves many complementary levels of analysis. A satisfactory understanding of a particular element in a text depends, not only on accurate identification of the words, but also on a knowledge of syntax, analysis of connections between this element and other parts of the text, and prior knowledge of the topic. An interactive theory of reading gives rise to an interesting prediction which we will cal l the compensaoton hypothe4ni.This hypothesis says that when one source of knowledge about the meaning of a text element is inoperative, other sources of knowledge may provide alternative ways of determining meaning. For illustration, suppose that there are no specific cues in a text about how a certain proposition ought to be integrated into the reader's representation, perhaps because explicit connectives were removed duringan:overzealous application of a readability formula (cf.Davison, Kantor, Hannah, Hermon, Lutz, & Salzillo, 1980). The reader may, nonetheless, be able to figure out how to integrate the proposition if he or she has adequate word processing skills and a well-developed schema for the topic of the discourse. Thus, these sources of knowledge may compensate for the lack of connectedness of the text.The first purpose of the research reported in this paper was to test the compensation hypothesis. In Experiment 1, texts were written that varied in cohesiveness and vocabulary difficulty. Based on the compensation hypothesis, we expected the subjects to do fairly well with texts containing a high degree of cohesion even when much of the vocabulary was difficult. We also expected them to do fairly well with low-cohesion texts that contained easy vocabulary. The one place where a sharp decrement in performance was expected was on low-cohesion texts that contained difficult vocabulary. In Experiment 2, texts were written that varied in topical familiarity, as well as vocabulary difficulty.Expectations paralleled those for the first experiment. Fairly good performance was expected when the text involved either a familiar topic and difficult vocabulary or an unfamiliar topic and easy vocabulary. Poor performance ...
