Children's control of computer-based reading assistance in answering synthesis questions

摘要

To examine the control of informational and strategic assistance for text comprehension, 30 fifth-grade students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions for reading a 250-word science text. One condution provided only a general prompt to reread important segments of text. A second condition provided this prompt and made a number of specific forms of assistance available (definitions, elaborated text, background information, hints about how to search for and integrate information). A third condition provided the prompt and prescribed the specific forms of assistance. Students viewed a synthesis question, read the text, used assistance as appropriate, and answered the question in a microcomputer, using software prepared expressly for the study. Three clear findings emerged. One was that subjects in the prescribed assistance condition performed better than the minimal and available assistance conditions on answering the synthesis question. A second was that providing assistance for working through a difficult reading and question-answering task did not ensure the assistance would be used, even in cases where performance might have been improved with assistance. A third finding was that certain choices made by readers (rereading informative segments, selecting just important words and phrases from an array of all the words and phrases in a text, knowing when one is adequately prepared to answer) significantly predicted score on the question response.