Text Segmenting and Comprehension: Effects of Reading and Information Processing Abilities

S ummary . A study is reported which tests the hypothesis that segmenting text into appropriate syntactic units will facilitate the comprehension of readers who have adequate word‐level skills but poor comprehension skills. This specific hypothesis is not confirmed, but evidence is presented that poor comprehenders, regardless of word‐level skills, do benefit from text segmenting. A second hypothesis tested concerns the information processing skills involved in syntactic analysis. Results confirm that simultaneous processing is involved in the forming of syntactic units. In conditions in which the text is already segmented, however, successive processing is shown to be involved, as well as simultaneous processing, it is argued, at a higher level. These results suggest that syntactic analysis is a potential bottleneck in reading, and that training studies should be designed, employing simultaneous and successive processing, to improve syntactic analysis skills and facilitate reading comprehension.