Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, The Journal of Educational Research, 108 (1), 2015, © Informa Plc
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Effect of imagery training on children's comprehension of pronouns
AU - Francey, Gillian
AU - Cain, Kate
N1 - The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, The Journal of Educational Research, 108 (1), 2015, © Informa Plc
PY - 2015/1/2
Y1 - 2015/1/2
N2 - Children with good and poor listening comprehension (n = 17 in each group) 9-10 years of age were trained to self-generate mental images for sentences and stories. Their ability to identify the antecedents of personal pronouns in individual sentences and also to select the appropriate pronoun in a story cloze task was assessed pre- and posttraining. In general, posttraining scores were significantly higher than pretraining scores. In both tasks, imagery training benefitted poor comprehenders when the pronoun and antecedent were close and good comprehenders when the pronoun and its antecedent were distant. The authors discuss these findings in relation to the memory demands of the task. This study shows that even 9-10-year-olds may experience difficulties with pronoun comprehension in particular circumstances, but that these difficulties can be reduced with a nonverbal support strategy.
AB - Children with good and poor listening comprehension (n = 17 in each group) 9-10 years of age were trained to self-generate mental images for sentences and stories. Their ability to identify the antecedents of personal pronouns in individual sentences and also to select the appropriate pronoun in a story cloze task was assessed pre- and posttraining. In general, posttraining scores were significantly higher than pretraining scores. In both tasks, imagery training benefitted poor comprehenders when the pronoun and antecedent were close and good comprehenders when the pronoun and its antecedent were distant. The authors discuss these findings in relation to the memory demands of the task. This study shows that even 9-10-year-olds may experience difficulties with pronoun comprehension in particular circumstances, but that these difficulties can be reduced with a nonverbal support strategy.
KW - reading ability
KW - pronouns
KW - memory
KW - LESS-SKILLED COMPREHENDERS
KW - READING-COMPREHENSION
KW - MENTAL-IMAGERY
KW - INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES
KW - WORKING-MEMORY
KW - LISTENING COMPREHENSION
KW - LANGUAGE COMPREHENSION
KW - STORY COMPREHENSION
KW - ANAPHORIC DEVICES
KW - WORD MEANINGS
U2 - 10.1080/00220671.2013.824869
DO - 10.1080/00220671.2013.824869
M3 - Journal article
VL - 108
SP - 1
EP - 9
JO - The Journal of Educational Research
JF - The Journal of Educational Research
SN - 0022-0671
IS - 1
ER -