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Implicit and explicit syntactic knowledge and reading in pre‐adolescents
Author(s) -
Gaux C.,
Gombert J. E.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
british journal of developmental psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.062
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 2044-835X
pISSN - 0261-510X
DOI - 10.1348/026151099165212
Subject(s) - syntax , reading comprehension , comprehension , psychology , linguistics , phrase , parsing , reading (process) , cognitive psychology , cognition , computer science , natural language processing , philosophy , neuroscience
This aim of this paper is to analyse the links between syntactic awareness and reading, in its recoding and comprehension aspects, in pre‐adolescent readers. The study, conducted with 83 sixth grade pupils, examined the relation between (1) seven syntactic and morpho‐syntactic tasks (repetition, judgment, correction, localization, explanation, replication and identification) and (2) several indicators of recoding and comprehension in reading. Regression analyses revealed differential contributions as a function of syntactic task, type of agrammaticality, and the aspect of reading tested, after we had controlled for the influence of reasoning, memory, and linguistic competences. Contributions resulting from the morpho‐syntactic tasks were observed more frequently for recoding, whereas those involving the inversion of word or phrase orders operated more frequently as indicators of reading comprehension. The more explicit the syntactic awareness tasks, the more frequent and greater their contribution to reading performances. Comparisons of syntactic performances as a function of three levels of reading comprehension (good, average, poor) revealed a syntactic deficit in the poor comprehenders. The poor comprehenders exhibited a deficit in the majority of the syntactic tasks. The average comprehenders achieved lower performances than the good comprehenders in the tasks assessing explicit knowledge of syntax but not in those assessing implicit knowledge.