A substantial amount of research has focused on children's reading development and reading problems, but in comparison there has been relatively little research into children's reading comprehension. This article provides an overview of the research that has investigated the skills and cognitive processes that support children's understanding of…

Explores whether training in mental imagery can improve text comprehension in good and poor nine-year-old comprehenders. Finds that a three-session program of training in imagery benefited the poor, but not the good, comprehenders. Discusses results in relation to possible causes of children's comprehension difficulties. (MG)

Two studies investigated the ability to use contextual information in stories to infer the meanings of novel vocabulary by 9-10-year-olds with good and poor reading comprehension. Across studies, children with poor reading comprehension were impaired when the processing demands of the task were greatest. In Study 2, working memory capacity was…

Investigated seven eight-year-old children's memory for aurally presented sentences. Used a recognition-memory task to probe constructive memory processes in two groups differentiated by reading comprehension. Results indicated the tendency to construct meanings was greater in children who scored higher on reading comprehension. (Author)

Noting that although some children read aloud with apparent fluency, they fail to understand fully or remember connected discourse, this book brings together research on children who have a specific comprehension deficit. The book first provides an introduction and overview of adult and child text comprehension, and then describes the research.…

Providing a summary of the psychological research on children's reading comprehension, this book explores the psychology of the reading process by concentrating on the development of reading comprehension skills. The book analyzes both the skills of fluent adult readers and the development of children's language from the age of five, when most…

Reports on two experiments that explore the comprehension difficulties of children with normal word recognition ability. Concludes that skilled readers engage in more constructive processing and that comprehension difficulties are not the result of a defective working memory. (SRT)