Enhancing Memory Access for Less Skilled Readers

ABSTRACT

Less skilled readers’ comprehension often suffers because they have an impoverished representation of text in long-term memory; this, in turn, increases the difficulty of gaining access to backgrounded information necessary for maintaining coherence. The results of four experiments demonstrated that providing less skilled readers with additional explicit interconnections enhanced their text representations in memory and increased their ability to maintain coherence. Experiments 1a and 1b confirmed the finding that less skilled readers were not disrupted by global inconsistencies. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that text manipulations designed to enhance the accessibility of global information led to less skilled readers being disrupted by global inconsistencies.