The Effects of Explicitness and Clause Order on the Comprehension of Reversible Causal Relationships

THE PURPOSE OF THE STUDIES reported here was to examine the effects of clause order and explicitness on fifth-grade and college-level students' comprehension of reversible causal relationships. Four versions of each of the experimental passages were developed: the explicit-normal clause order version, the implicit-normal clause order version, the explicit-reverse clause order version, and the implicit-reverse clause order version. Comprehension was measured by means of a forced-choice task. The results of the fifth-grade study indicated that the explicit-condition groups had a higher level of comprehension of the causal relationships than did the implicitcondition groups. The level of comprehension of all the fifth-grade groups was generally quite low, however, and clause order was not a significant variable in that study. In the college-level study, both explicitness and clause order were significant factors.