The role of inference in children's comprehension and memory is the subject of this research report. An underlying proposition is that in order for a child to effectively understand and remember linguistic or nonlinguistic information, he must actively embellish the given stimulus material with his own implicit knowledge. In the experiment…

Children's comprehension and memory for different kinds of information in prose was assessed in two experiments. In the first experiment, 72 elementary school children listened to paragraphs and answered questions about explicit and implicit semantic relationships. The second experiment investigated the relationship between children's initial…

The final report and a general summary of a research project that assessed the developmental differences in children's use of constructive reading strategies are presented in this paper. The five chapters of the final report offer descriptions of separate studies conducted in the following areas: children's metacognitive knowledge about reading;…

A cued recall procedure was employed to assess the effectiveness of implicit and explicit word prompts for sentence memory in children. The implicit cues were much less effective than the explicit cues for 6-7 year olds while the cue types did not differ for 11-12 year olds. (Author/DEP)

In three studies, children between five and ten years of age listened to short stories and answered questions about presented and implied information. Results demonstrated how hypothesis generation, comprehension monitoring, clue integration, and converging evidence influence children's developing inferential reasoning. (Author/MP)

The role of reversibility in children's comprehension and memory for sequences of pictures was investigated for children in preschool, kindergarten, and first and second grades. Bidirectionality in the ability to remember and infer antecedents and consequences was assessed. (JMB)

This paper explains the creation and validation of the Narrative Comprehension of Picture Books task (NC task), an assessment of young children's comprehension of wordless picture books. Study 1 explored developmental improvements in the task, as well as relationships to other measures of early reading. Subjects, 158 K-2 students, were…

Explains the creation and validation of the Narrative Comprehension of Picture Books task (NC task), an assessment of young children's comprehension of wordless picture books. Creates and tests assessment materials and procedures that can be used with young children, whether or not they can decode print. Discusses how narrative comprehension is…

Children's ability to infer consequences from sentences automatically was assessed in two cued recall experiments. Seven- and eight-year-old children and adults served as subjects. (JMB)