Text Type and Reader Ability: The Effects on Paraphrase and Text-Based Inference Questions

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Abstract
This study investigated good and poor readers' ability to answer text-based inference and paraphrase questions after reading two narrative stories and two expository passages. Subjects were selected that differed only on reading comprehension, not decoding accuracy or language comprehension, and were asked text-based informational and logical inference questions which were classified according to the Warren, Nicholas, and Trabasso (1979) inference taxonomy. Subjects were also asked questions that paraphrased the verbatim information in the text. Dependent measures were researcher-designed questions and reading times for each text. Results indicate that (a) logical text-based inference questions were significantly more difficult to answer than either informational inference questions or paraphrase questions, but only after reading narrative stories; (b) paraphrase questions were as difficult to answer as informational inference questions on both types of text; (c) expository passages were significantly more difficult for the children to understand than narrative stories; (d) good readers answered significantly more text-based inference questions and paraphrase questions than poor readers on both types of text; and (e) good readers read the texts faster than poor readers.