Learning Disabled and Nondisabled College Students' Use of Structure in Recall of Stories and Text

Abstract

This study compared LD and average college students' use of expository text structure and story grammar to recall social studies text passages. Students simultaneously read and listened to three passages with different structures: story grammar, comparison, and causation. Results were analyzed for structure use in immediate oral recall. No difference was found between the groups on the use of story grammar and comparison structure. However, the LD students scored significantly lower than their average peers on the causation structure. The results support research showing that LD students use story structure as well as nondisabled students and suggest that structure use is developmental, with use of comparison structures preceding use of causation.

Verbal Retelling Abilities in Adolescents With and Without Language-Learning Disabilities for Social Studies Lectures

“…Lecture Di f ferences Both groups were found to produce a significantly greater number of T-units and subordinate clauses in their retellings of the comparison lecture content compared with the causation lecture. This finding supports the hypothesis that the comparison discourse structure is more facilitative of recall than the causation discourse structure (Bacon & Carpenter, 1989; Richgels, McGee, Lomax, & Sheard, 1987). These researchers have presented results that suggest that discourse structure use is developmental, with use of a comparison discourse structure preceding use of a causation discourse structure.…”

“…Data preparation indicated that the following dependent variables were found to be skewed (i.e., skewness divided by standard error of skewness 2.00; Tabachnick & Fidell, 1989) for the comparison lecture: number of (Copmann & Griffith, 1994). Given the proposal that participants use discourse structure to recall passage content (Bacon & Carpenter, 1989;Meyer & Freedle, 1984), it is possible that the ability to recall lecture components in this study reflected to some degree the ability to use expository discourse structure. If this were the case, then our data would support Bacon and Carpenter's finding that college students with NL used expository discourse structure better than their participants with LD in verbal retellings of a causation passage.…”

“…These researchers have presented results that suggest that discourse structure use is developmental, with use of a comparison discourse structure preceding use of a causation discourse structure. They have found that sixth graders (Richgels et al, 1987) and college students with LD (Bacon & Carpenter, 1989) have greater difficulty using the causation structure than the comparison structure to facilitate their recall of text. Meyer and Freedle's (1984) finding that both comparison and causation discourse structures facilitated recall in their graduate students may have been related to the fact that their participants were adults with NL, as opposed to adolescents with LLD or NL.…”

“…The existence of language impairments negatively impacted the amount of information correctly recalled, despite the fact that the passages read aloud to the partidpants were short and simple. Bacon and Carpenter (1989) compared the verbal recall performance of &dquo;average&dquo; undergraduate students and those with LD for social studies text passages following a simultaneous listening / reading task. Two of the passages had expository discourse structures (i.e., comparison and causation), and one passage had a narrative discourse structure (i.e., story grammar).…”