Monitoring of Understanding: An Investigation of Good and Poor Readers' Awareness of Induced Miscomprehension of Text

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Abstract
Good and poor junior high readers were directed to process two expository passages as editors. Each passage had been divided into four segments, and in two of the four segments of one passage, material had been altered to introduce inconsistency with the overall message. Comprehension-miscomprehension monitoring was assessed after each segment; the readers were asked to rate each chunk as “very easy to understand,” “ok,” or “difficult to understand,” and to explain instances of the latter two ratings after completion of the entire passage at hand. A material × segment × reader repeated-measures ANOVA revealed numerous significant main and interaction effects. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis of data supported the original hypothesis of good reader/poor reader differences in comprehension-miscomprehension monitoring. It seems that good readers noticed the disruptive effect of the altered material and poor readers did not.