Look back at text or rely on memory? Efficacy of reading comprehension strategies in good and poor oral comprehenders

Abstract

Background: Reading comprehension is a multifactorial process, but one of its features has been relatively under-investigated: it is the strategy used when answering reading comprehension questions. In order to find the correct answer, children can either respond to questions about a text relying on their text memory or look back at the written text. This study analyses (i) which strategy, memory or look-back is more frequently adopted in primary school children according to grade level and type of text (expository vs narrative) and (ii) the preferred (most frequently used) and more efficient (higher number of correct responses) strategy for poor oral comprehenders. Poor oral comprehenders were selected for having adequate nonword decoding skills but impaired oral comprehension, compared with good oral comprehenders. Methods: The total sample comprised 1,417 primary school children. A standardised test assessing reading and comprehension of oral and written language was administered. Results: In the comparison among children attending different grades, older children showed a more frequent use of the look-back strategy for the expository text, whereas no age-related difference emerged for the narrative text. Poor oral comprehenders (n = 88) showed a different pattern, compared with matched good oral comprehenders (n = 88), for both preference and efficiency of strategies. Despite having a globally poorer performance in reading comprehension, poor oral comprehenders were more accurate than good oral comprehenders when using the look-back strategy. Conclusions: The complex pattern of results obtained reinforces the idea that intervention strategies should be personalised based on individual characteristics and specific for the type of task and text.

Working memory and fluid intelligence predict reading comprehension in school‐age children: A one‐year longitudinal study

“…It is possible that this textpresent measure impose lower demands on WM than if responses were to be given in the absence of the recently read paragraphs. Children could use a look-back strategy to locate relevant information in the text when responding, and this would lead to diminished demands of storage and processing of verbal information in WM (Tobia & Bonifacci, 2020). This may explain the greater These results agree with previous evidence that verbal STM and verbal WM show cross-sectional associations with performance in reading comprehension, but when its longitudinal contribution is considered verbal WM is more predictive than verbal STM (Alloway & Alloway, 2010;Gathercole & Alloway, 2006;Swanson et al, 2009;Vernucci et al, 2017).…”

“…It is possible that this text‐present measure impose lower demands on WM than if responses were to be given in the absence of the recently read paragraphs. Children could use a look‐back strategy to locate relevant information in the text when responding, and this would lead to diminished demands of storage and processing of verbal information in WM (Tobia & Bonifacci, 2020). This may explain the greater contribution of fluid intelligence compared to that of verbal WM.…”

Development of the national cultural identity of students of humanitarian specialties in the learning process

“…Это развивает и дополняет идеи учёных об улучшении мотивации чтения при работе с различного рода текстами [40], о необходимости создания ситуации успеха при создании собственного текста [41], об оптимизации уровня социального познания человеком себя и явлений окружающей действительности [42], изменении стратегий понимания прочитанного [43]. Всё это согласуется с результатами авторов данной статьи.…”

The relationship between mind wandering and reading comprehension: A meta-analysis

“…To complicate the matter further, factors that are thought to influence MW during reading have also been found to affect RC performance. For instance, previous research analyzed comprehension differences between narrative versus informative texts, which demand different cognitive skills (Eason, et al, 2012 ) and strategies for answering (Tobia & Bonifacci, 2020 ), and it has been suggested that narrative texts might be easier to comprehend than expository texts (Best et al, 2008 ; Yildirim et al, 2010 ). In addition, reading assessment might also indirectly impact RC, as it was found that is decoding, not oral comprehension, that accounts for most of the variance in tests that used cloze tasks to assess RC, whereas the reverse holds for tasks with open questions (Francis, et al, 2005 ; Keenan et al, 2008 ; Tobia & Bonifacci, 2015 ).…”