|
KMID : 0921420100150030348
|
|
Korean Journal of Communication Disorders
2010 Volume.15 No. 3 p.348 ~ p.356
|
|
|
Comprehension of Ambiguous Words in Children with Poor Reading Comprehension
|
|
Ko Sun-Hee
Choi Kyung-Soon
Hwang Min-A
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
Background & Objectives: Frequently, a word has more than one meaning. During reading, readers should determine a word’s meaning relevant to a given context, while suppressing other contextually irrelevant meanings. In the present study, we investigated whether children with poor reading comprehension skills were able to suppress contextually irrelevant meanings of ambiguous words as effectively as could typically developing children.
Methods: Fourteen children with poor reading comprehension skills and 14 typically developed children participated in the study. All children were upper elementary school aged. The children were asked to judge whether the meaning of the final word of a clause was related to the following target word. For all of the 64 experimental items, the meanings of the target words were not related to the meanings of the final words of the preceding clauses. Half of the final words of the experimental clauses were ambiguous words and the other half were unambiguous words. Sixty-four foil items were also generated so that the target words were related to the final meanings of the clauses. The reaction times as well as the response accuracies were measured in all children.
Results: The poor comprehenders were significantly less accurate than were the normal children in judging the relatedness between the clause final word and the following target word. Both groups of children made more errors in the ambiguous word condition than they did in the unambiguous word condition. No interaction between group and word type was observed. In terms of reaction times, the poor comprehenders were significantly slower in the ambiguous word condition compared to the unambiguous word condition, whereas the normal children’s reaction times were not significantly different in the two conditions.
Discussion & Conclusion: The poor comprehenders were less effective at suppressing contextually irrelevant meanings of ambiguous words compared to the typically developing children.
|
|
|
KEYWORD
|
|
|
children, reading comprehension skills, semantic word processing, ambiguous words, suppression of contextually irrelevant word mea
|
|
|
FullTexts / Linksout information
|
|
|
|
|
|
Listed journal information
|
|
|