Children's Reading Rate and Retention as a Function of the Number of Propositions in a Text

KEENAN, JANICE M., and BROWN, POLLY. Children's Reading Rate and Retention as a Function of the Number of Propositions in a Text. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1984, 55, 1556-1569. This study examined whether there are differences between beginning and skilled readers in the units used to represent the meaning of a text. For skilled readers, the time to read a sentence is a function of the number of propositions contained in the sentence. To assess whether beginning readers also use propositional representations, the reading times of beginning third graders were compared with those of fifth graders on sentences that all had the same number of words but varied in the number of underlying propositions. Although third graders read more slowly than fifth graders, they showed the same increase in reading time with increasing numbers of propositions, suggesting that they use the same propositional units and process them at the same rate as fifth graders. This held for long sentences, which place an increased load on memory and attentional resources, as well as short sentences, and for average as well as high-ability readers. Immediate recall of the sentences for both grade levels showed that the higher the proposition in the propositional hierarchy, the more likely it was recalled. Average readers recalled higher-level propositions as well as good readers, but they recalled significantly fewer of the lowest-level propositions.