EFFECTS OF PRIOR KNOWLEDGE, EXPLICITNESS, AND CLAUSE ORDER ON CHILDREN'S COMPREHENSION OF CAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of prior knowledge, explicitness and clause order on fifth‐ and sixth‐grade readers’ ability to infer causal cohesive ties in text. One hundred sixty‐eight fifth‐ and sixth‐grade students were randomly assigned from three prior knowledge blocks to participate. A text booklet comprised of four versions of six experimental passages was developed: an explicit‐normal‐clause‐order version, an implicit‐normal‐clause‐order version, an explicit‐reversed‐clause‐order version, and an implicit‐reversed‐clause‐order version. Comprehension of the causal relationships in the passages was measured by free recall task, a yes‐no‐why question, cohesion cloze tasks, literal and inferential questions. Significant effects for explicitness were found for fifth‐grade readers on all variables but only on the cohesion cloze task for sixth‐grade. Significant effects for prior knowledge were found for fifth‐ and sixth‐grade students on all variables except the cohesion cloze task. Significant effects for clause order were found for fifth‐grade readers’ on literal comprehension and for fifth‐ and sixth‐grade readers on the cohesion cloze task. There was a significant interaction between prior knowledge and clause order on the literal comprehension variable for fifth grade. No other significant interactions with prior knowledge were found.