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TEXT SEGMENTING AND COMPREHENSION: EFFECTS OF READING AND INFORMATION PROCESSING ABILITIES
Author(s) -
KIRBY JOHN R.,
GORDON CHRISTOPHER J.
Publication year - 1988
Publication title -
british journal of educational psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.557
H-Index - 95
eISSN - 2044-8279
pISSN - 0007-0998
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8279.1988.tb00904.x
Subject(s) - reading comprehension , comprehension , reading (process) , psychology , information processing , bottleneck , text segmentation , natural language processing , syntactic structure , word processing , linguistics , text processing , market segmentation , segmentation , computer science , cognitive psychology , syntax , artificial intelligence , philosophy , embedded system , marketing , business
S ummary . A study is reported which tests the hypothesis that segmenting text into appropriate syntactic units will facilitate the comprehension of readers who have adequate word‐level skills but poor comprehension skills. This specific hypothesis is not confirmed, but evidence is presented that poor comprehenders, regardless of word‐level skills, do benefit from text segmenting. A second hypothesis tested concerns the information processing skills involved in syntactic analysis. Results confirm that simultaneous processing is involved in the forming of syntactic units. In conditions in which the text is already segmented, however, successive processing is shown to be involved, as well as simultaneous processing, it is argued, at a higher level. These results suggest that syntactic analysis is a potential bottleneck in reading, and that training studies should be designed, employing simultaneous and successive processing, to improve syntactic analysis skills and facilitate reading comprehension.