Reading Ability and Use of a Story Schema in Recalling and Reconstructing Information

• Published in: Journal of educational psychology Vol. 78; no. 5; pp. 323 - 333
• Main Authors: Rahman, Taslima, Bisanz, Gay L
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Psychological Association 01-10-1986; American Psychological Association, etc
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Elementary School Students; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Language; Learning; Literacy; Production and perception of written language; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Reading Ability; Reading Comprehension; Recall (Learning); Reconstruction (Learning); Social research; Text Structure; Human; Verbal learning; Reading; School age; Acquisition process; Language; Memory; Interindividual comparison; Language development; Recall; Sentence comprehension; Child
• ISSN: 0022-0663; 1939-2176
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-0663.78.5.323

This study focused on the differences between good and poor readers in their use of a story schema in recall and reconstruction tasks. Above- and below-average comprehenders in the sixth grade heard a story either in canonical (standard) or interleaved (a form of scrambling) format. They were instructed to recall the story and reconstruct the order of story events either exactly as they heard it or as it should be. The procedure was repeated in a second phase. The data allowed us to draw four conclusions about schema use by good and poor readers under simple (reconstruction) and more difficult (free recall) task demands. First, performance in the reconstruction and recall tasks showed that both good and poor readers could use a story schema when the story followed canonical format. Poor readers' story schema, however, was either not as well developed or as efficiently used as good readers'. Second, both recall and reconstruction data provided evidence that schematic retrieval is not obligatory for either type of reader. Third, good readers could use a story schema when cued to do so in any task, but poor readers could do so only in the reconstruction task. Fourth, differential improvement of poor readers' performance relative to good readers' in the second phase of the experiment due to previous experience in the first phase was obtained only in the reconstruction task. Compared with those of previous developmental studies, these conclusions support the view that poor readers perform quite differently from younger normal children. Implications for educational research and intervention studies are discussed.