The effects of storage and processing complexity on comprehension repair in children and adults

JOURNAL

OF EXPERIMENTAL

CHILD

PSYCHOLOGY

37, 303-334 (1984)

The Effects of Storage and Processing Complexity on Comprehension Repair in Children and Adults BRIAN P. ACKERMAN University

of Delaware

In four experiments, the ability of young children (6 to 10 years of age) and college adults to repair a comprehension problem in situations varying repair difficulty was examined. The subjects were read short stories describing a consistent or inconsistent adult response to a child’s action, and repair information that resolved or failed to resolve the inconsistency. The subjects were asked questions after each story to determine if they had detected and resolved the inconsistency. The repair information was manipulated as a means of varying the storage and processing complexity of integrating problem and repair information. The information was separated from or adjacent to the inconsistent response, before or after the response, and the relevancy of the repair information was obvious or only inferentially available. The results showed that even first graders can repair a comprehension problem in situations of minimal information processing complexity, and that increments in complexity affect the repair performance of younger more than older subjects.

Comprehension of utterances or prose statements involves at least two component processes: understanding the propositional content of the statement, and relating that content to the intrinsic discourse context (cf. Clark & Carlson, 1981) of the statement. As any undergraduate knows, the latter process often goes awry, and the listener experiences comprehension failure (cf. Ackerman, 1982a). As the term is used here, comprehension failure describes a listener’s inability to relate a statement in its literal form to the discourse context. The way mature listeners cope with episodes of comprehension failure can be described as consisting of three related processes. The first involves Foremost, 1 thank two anonymous reviewers of this journal for the extraordinary help they gave. I thank the children and staff of West Park Elementary School, Newark, DE, and of Kemblesville Elementary School, Kemblesville, PA. I especially thank the principal of the Kemblesville School, Dr. John Neil]. I also thank Joan Rappoport and Elizabeth Rust-Kahl for their help in conducting the study. The study was supported by Grant 1 ROl HD 15932-01 from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Please send reprint requests to me at the Department of Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19711. 303 0022~0965/84 $3 .OO Copyright 0 1984 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

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BRIANP.ACKERMAN

detection of the inconsistency of the statement information with contextual information. The second involves evaluation of the output of this consistency check. The listener must decide whether the inconsistency was intentional or accidental, trivial or important on semantic and pragmatic grounds, whether it should be attributed to speaker (author) or listener (reader) error, etc. The third process involves repair of the comprehension problem. Depending on the output of the evaluation process, the listener can infer the speaker’s nonliteral or extraliteral intent, wait for further clarifying information, or reinterpret information presented previously, ask a question, give up, etc. Immature listeners, like young children, probably do not cope with episodes of comprehension failure as well as adults do. Recent studies have addressed developmental deficiencies in each of the detection, evaluation, and repair processes. Concerning detection, Markman (1979) has suggested third grade children primarily perform line by line processing of textual information and do not detect inconsistency in information. Because of their inability, or unwillingness, to integrate and compare contextual and statement information, these children seemed to be insensitive to their own failures to comprehend. Other studies, however, offer less support for a general deficiency in detection processes. For example, Harris, Kruithof, Terwogt, and Visser (1981) found that the S-year-olds in their study attempted to integrate statement and contextual information and detected textual anomalies, as measured by response latencies, although the children did not identify the anomalies. Similarly, in a series of studies, Ackerman has shown that 6-year-old children can detect inconsistent and contradictory utterances (Ackerman 198la. 1982b. 1983a, 1983b) and surprising events (Ackerman, 1982a). Given these divergent developmental patterns, it is likely young children’s ability to perform efficient consistency checks depends on situational information processing constraints, like the difficulty of integrating contextual and statement information, and the familiarity of the information. Instead of generalized developmental deficiencies in detecting inconsistency, Stein and Trabasso (1982) and Ackerman (1982a) suggest young children are not as adept as older children and adults at evaluating the output of the detection process. This could result from the use of different comprehension strategies (cf. Stein & Trabasso, 1982; Ackerman, 1983a). an inability to monitor the detection process (cf. Harris et al., 19X1), or a lack of knowledge of the general conventions of utterance use (Ackerman, 1981a, 1981b). For example, Ackerman (1983a) found that first graders relied on external superficial information in deciding whether utterances were contradictory or not. In particular, these children would contradict child speakers but not adult speakers who used a factually false utterance. Adults used a comprehension strategy that weighed factors of more intrinsic value in evaluating utterance use. Ackerman (1981a) also found

COMPREHENSION

REPAIR

305

that first graders detected the use of false utterances but did not take account of the speaker’s intentionality in evaluating utterance use. These and other studies (Ackerman, 1981~; Patterson, O’Brien, Kister, Carter, & Kotsonis, 1981; Singer & Flavell, 1981) suggest young children detect inconsistent, ambiguous, or anomalous statements in many situations but often fail to evaluate the use of these statements vis-a-vis their own comprehension processes in the same way adults do. Finally, consider repair processes. Evaluation and repair are hard to separate. It is difficult to know, for example, whether a failure to resolve inconsistency is due to a failure to represent a comprehension problem correctly, and hence a problem of evaluation, or to take appropriate steps to solve an identified problem. These processes are also likely to be interactive. Lack of knowledge of conventional repair solutions, as for example, in the use of idioms (Ackerman, 1982~) or ironic utterances (Ackerman, 1983b), may affect the evaluation process. However, there is some evidence first graders will infer a speaker’s nonliteral intent in some circumstances, but not in others, given the same comprehension problem (Ackerman, 1982b, 1983b), suggesting that there are factors intrinsic to the repair process that affect children’s ability to resolve a comprehension problem. The present study focuses on children’s repair of comprehension problems. The particular repair process at issue involved the use of clarifying information presented after a statement or contextual information presented before a statement, to make coherent sense of an inconsistent event in a story. The experimental strategy minimized potential sources of developmental deficiency in the detection and evaluation processes, and varied factors hypothesized to affect repair efficiency. Regarding the detection process, stimulus materials were used that a previous study (Ackerman, 1982a) has shown promote reasonably equivalent levels of inconsistency detection among children and adults. In addition, in Experiments 1 and 4, question probes assessed inconsistency detection, and Experiment 2 focused on the detection process alone. Regarding evaluation, Experiment 3 asked children to discriminate between resolving and irrelevant information that best explained some unusual event. Basic components of the evaluation process involve the judgments first that inconsistency is a problem, and not trivial; second, that the inconsistency requires resolution; and third, that the specific resolution information is relevant to the comprehension problem.’ The purpose of Experiment 3 was to evaluate repair performance when potential errors in the first two judgments are minimized by using a task in which the subjects must ’ This third judgment seems to contain elements of both evaluation and relevance judgment cannot be made unless the problem and repair information to some extent. The evaluation classification here is meant to describe developmental differences in judgment criteria given that the information can

repair since a are integrated only possible be integrated.

306

BRIAN

P. ACKERMAN

attempt to repair events explicitly labeled inconsistent. Similarly, in Experiment 4, the subjects were instructed to note inconsistencies and to search for resolving information. These instructions minimize the possibility that children will detect but trivialize a comprehension problem. Errors in the third kind of evaluation judgment are impossible to separate from problems of integrating problem and resolution information, at this point. An estimate of this third source of evaluation error is obtained in Experiment 3. Regardless of the success of the materials manipulations designed to minimize developmental detection and evaluation differences, a finding that children resolve a comprehension problem in one situation but not in another can yield reliable information about children’s repair processes. Several factors were manipulated in Experiments 1 and 4 in an effort to assess the effects of information processing complexity on children’s repair performance. Repair performance was conceptualized as involving storage and processing components (cf. Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Storage complexity was manipulated by varying information availability. The repair information was placed either adjacent to the inconsistent event, or separated from it by two sentences. Since Glanzer, Dorfman, and Kaplan (1981) have shown that storage capacity of adults for prose seems to be two or three sentences this contiguity variable should affect the availability of problem and repair information. It was also assumed, based on evidence provided by Daneman and Case (1981) and Daneman and Carpenter (1980), that there are developmental changes with age in information storage, and hence that children might be more affected by the contiguity variable than adults. Processing complexity was manipulated in two ways, both involving the operational transformation of repair information. Relying on work by Case and his associates (cf. Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982). it was assumed that the children would be more affected by the processing manipulations than would the adults. First, the relevant repair information was placed either after or before the inconsistent event to see if the subjects could both take advantage of succeeding information presented after the event, or reinterpret previous information presented before the event, to resolve the inconsistency. Since the repair information must be cast in a way that addresses the comprehension problem, it was assumed that reinterpretation would require an additional processing operation, and so would expend more processing resources than would an original interpretation of repair information (cf. Daneman & Carpenter, 1980). This temporal location (before or after) variable was factorially combined with the contiguity variable and the second processing variable described below. Second, the inferential complexity involved in integrating problem and repair information was varied. The repair information was either directly

COMPREHENSION

REPAIR

307

relevant to the problem in that it addressed the problem state in a specific way, or it was indirectly (inferentially) relevant in that only general information was provided. In each case, the indirect information was an abstraction from the direct information. In general, the effects of the storage and processing variables in this study are conceptualized as involving complexity increments. Though it is impossible to weight or compare these increments at this point, it is assumed that each may affect repair performance adversely. Given this, several predictions can be made about the effects of the manipulations. First, each increment should affect performance independently compared against the no increment adjacent/after with Direct Resolving information reference baseline situation. Second, in a general way, repair performance should vary inversely with the number of complexity increments. Third, combinations of the storage and a processing increment should have additive effects that differ from the effects resulting from combinations of the two processing variables. Fourth, developmental differences in repair performance should be minimized in the no increment situation and vary directly with increments in complexity otherwise. In the major experiments in this study, Experiments 1 and 4, first and fourth grade children and college adults were read short stories describing an action by a child character, and a contingent response by an adult character that was either consistent or inconsistent with the child’s action. For example, a home owner might yell at a girl for throwing wood (consistent) or using a hose (inconsistent) on a fire in the man’s backyard. For the inconsistent stories, repair information was given either before or after and adjacent to or separated from the adults’ response. The repair information was either indirectly resolving, (i.e., It was in the fall, and there were leaves everywhere), directly resolving (The man was burning leaves), or nonresolving (The fire was burning). The consistent stories were used as controls for response biases. The subjects were asked three questions after each paragraph. The Expectation question addressed the inconsistency in the story. Response differences between the consistent and inconsistent stories provided a measure of problem detection. The Resolution question addressed whether the inconsistency had been resolved finally. Response differences between resolving and nonresolving types of repair information provided a measure of problem resolution. The Memory question asked about factual information presented early in each story. The Memory question was asked to ensure that content memory differences were not responsible for the repair performance results. Finally, this study attempted to determine the relationship between the effects of complexity increments on repair performance and working memory capacity. Working memory capacity was measured independently by means of a memory span test developed by Case (cf. Daneman & Case,

308

BRIAN

P. ACKERMAN

1981). This measure was correlated with repair performance in the various conditions. Insofar as working memory has a fixed total structural capacity, the measure should be informative about the capacity limitations on performance. However, the measure is insensitive to the storage and processing complexity distinction. EXPERIMENT

1

Method

Subjects Forty-eight children from each of the first (mean age = 6;6, range 6;0 to 7;O) and fourth (mean age = 9;3, range 8;6 to 1O;O) grades and fortyeight college adults participated. The children were from public elementary schools serving middle income communities in or close to Newark, Delaware. The adults were University of Delaware students who participated for course credit. Design The primary comparisons required a 3 (Grade: First, Fourth, or College) x 2 (Temporal Location: Before or After) x 2 (Contiguity: Adjacent or Separated) x 3 (Resolution Type: Indirect Resolving, Direct Resolving, or Nonresolving) mixed factorial design, with the last factor within subjects. Resolution type for this comparison involved only the relation of repair information to inconsistent contextual and event information. Performance on these inconsistent paragraphs was compared also against performance on control paragraphs in which the contextual and event information was consistent. Materials A set of 18 short six-sentence stories were created, each consisting of contextual information, a response episode, and resolution information. Two stories were for pretraining; the others were the experimental stimuli. Examples of the stories can be seen in Table 1. The stories were organized around contextual information describing an action by a child character, and a description of a contingent response by an adult character. Two kinds of child actions were created for each story. In the Consistent contexts, the action and response were consistent, in that the response was appropriate. In the Inconsistent contexts, the adult’s response was the opposite of what would normally occur, and so was inappropriate and unexpected. The contextual information always preceded the response information in the stories. The resolution part of each story was one sentence that addressed the relation between the child’s action and the adult’s response. There were three kinds of resolution information for each story. The Direct Resolving information supplied a reason for the inconsistency of the adult’s response.

COMPREHENSION TABLE SAMPLE

STORIES AND

AND

QUESTIONS

THE INDIRECT

WITH

309

REPAIR 1

THE CONSISTENT

RESOLVING, DIRECT RESOLVING, REPAIR INFORMATION

AND

INCONSISTENT

AND

CONTEXTS

NONRESOLVING

story 1 (1)” Billy was running in a race in his new red shorts. He was very tired (and he finished thirtieth) (but he finished Jirsr).’ (2) After the race, the judge came over to Billy and congratulated him and gave him a medal. (3) Billy walked over and found his father. His father drove him home. (4) Repair

alternatives

The race was very crowded with runners. (Indirect Resolving) The race had ten thousand runners. (Direct Resolving) The team did well. (Nonresolving) Questions

1. Did you think Billy was going to (win a medal) (win nothing)?’ (Expectation Question) 2. Should Billy have been (rewarded) (scolded a little) for how he had done? (Resolution Question) 3. Were his shorts (red) (green)? (Memory Question) Story 2 (1) On the way to the drugstore, Janice saw a small fire burning in a man’s backyard. She (tried to put it out with a hose) (threw some wood on the fire). (2) The owner of the house saw her and yelled at her. (3) Janice zipped up her coat. She went into the store. (4) Repair

alternatives

It was in the fall, and there were leaves everywhere. (Indirect Resolving) He was burning leaves. (Direct Resolving) The fire was starting to bum very brightly. (Nonresolving) Questions

1. Did you think the man was going to be (mad at her) (happy with her)? (Expectation Question) 2. Should she have (tried to put out the fire) (left the fire alone)? (Resolution Question) 3. Was she on her way to the (drugstore) (supermarket)? (Memory Question) Story 3 (1) It was Sunday in July, and Robert and his family were going to church. Robert got dressed in (his old jeans and sneakers) (his good suir). (2) When he came downstairs, his mother said that he looked okay. (3) Robert walked outside. He got into the car. (4) Repair

alternatives

There was an outdoor picnic. (Indirect Resolving) There was going to be a church picnic at the park. (Direct Resolving) They were getting dressed for church. (Nonresolving) Questions

1. Did you expect his mother to be (mad about) (pleased with) the way he was dressed? (Expectation Question) 2. Should Robert have dressed in (old) (new good) clothes? (Resolution Question) 3. Was it in (July) (May)? (Memory Question) ” (I), (2), (3), and (4) represent placements of repair information in the different contiguity and temporal location combinations. b ( ) Contains inconsistent information and (-) contains consistent information. c All questions were asked with “yes” and “no” alternatives across lists.

310

BRIAN

P. ACKERMAN

The relation of the reason to the inconsistency was obvious. The Zndirect Resolving information also supplied a reason for the inconsistency, but the relation was not obvious, and only apparent inferentially. In each case, the Indirect reason was an abstraction from the Direct reason. For example, the Direct reason why a man would yell at a girl who put out a fire in his backyard was that the man was burning leaves. The Indirect abstraction was that “it was in the fall, and there were leaves everywhere.” Finally, the Nonresolving information was a paraphrase, or elaboration, of some aspect of the contextual information that made the inconsistency more salient in the inconsistent stories, and the adult’s response more motivated in the consistent stories. Four lists of the 16 experimental stories were created to balance for contextual consistency and the type of resolving information. Each list contained 12 stories with inconsistent contexts, and 4 stories with consistent contexts. There were 4 stories with each type of resolving information among the 12 inconsistent stories; the consistent stories were read only with the Nonresolving information. Across the lists, each story was read with each one of the four combinations of contextual and resolution information (inconsistent contexts with direct resolving, indirect resolving, and nonresolving information, and consistent contexts with nonresolving information). The story presentation order was chosen randomly but was the same for each list. This fixed order equated for presentation position for each combination of contextual and resolution information across lists, and thus controlled for serial position effects and the possible effects of performance improvement throughout each list. The placement of the resolution information was also varied. In each 6-sentence story, sentences 1 and 2 were contextual information, sentence 3 described the adult’s response, and sentences 4 and 5 were neutral filler sentences describing some continuation of the episode. The additional sixth sentence was the resolution information. This information was presented either temporally Before or After the adults’ response, and in a story position either Adjacent to the response, or Separated by two sentences. Hence, the resolution information was read in story positions 1 in the Before/Separated, 6 in the After/Separated, 3 in the Before/ Adjacent, and 4 in the After/Adjacent conditions. Minor variations occurred in this order in several stories to maintain story coherence. These contiguity and spatial location factors were manipulated between subjects. Three questions were generated for each story. The questions were the same across the list, contiguity, and temporal location variations. Examples can be seen in Table 1. The Expectation question asked whether the subject thought that the child character would be rewarded or not. This question concerned the intrinsic value of nature of the child’s action and its relation to the adult’s response. The Resolution question asked whether the adult or the child should have acted in a particular way.

COMPREHENSION

REPAIR

311

The Memory question asked about the characteristics of some factual information given in the first or second sentence in each paragraph. Two forms of each question were created so that “yes” and “no” answers were the same in each list. With this constraint, the patterns of “yes” and “no” answers for the questions for each story were chosen randomly. The questions were always asked in this order: Expectation, Resolution, Memory. One pretraining story contained an inconsistent context and direct resolving information; the second had a consistent context. The resolving information in both was presented after and separated from the adult’s response. Procedure

The subjects were assigned randomly to a list, temporal location, and contiguity condition. Each subject was told he or she would be read short stories and asked three questions after each story about what happened in the story. The questions should be answered “yes” or “no,” and the subject should guess if the answer was unknown or could not be figured out. The fourth graders and adults wrote their answers on answer sheets. The spoken responses of the first graders were recorded by the experimenter. The subjects were told that the answers to the first question (the Expectation question) could not be changed. Each subject was then read and quizzed on the pretraining stories as a demonstration of the procedure. Answers were corrected and explained. Following this, the experimental stories and questions were read by the experimenter. No feedback was given for any answer. Finally, after the experimental sequence was completed, each subject was given the test of working memory for one-syllable common words developed by Case (see Daneman & Case, 1981). Results The answers to the three questions were analyzed independently. Preliminary analyses indicated that the response patterns did not differ as a function of list assignment, or as a function of whether the questions took “yes” or “no” answers, so these factors were excluded from subsequent analyses. All effects in the analyses reported in this study were analyzed either by subsequent analyses of simple effects or by planned individual comparisons (cf. Winer, 1971). The significance level of all individual comparisons was set at p < .Ol. In addition, the analyses of both the Expectation and Resolution question answers were performed treating both subjects, as reported, and paragraphs as random factors. The latter analyses showed that the paragraphs did not differ systematically in any way.

312

BRIAN P. ACKERMAN

Expectation

Question

The answers to the Expectation questions were analyzed in two ways. The first was to determine the effect of the resolving information on recognition of the expectation violation in the inconsistent contexts. The second was to assess age differences in responding to consistent or inconsistent contexts and hence detection of a comprehension problem. The mean percent denial responses to the consistent and inconsistent contexts can be seen in Table 2. A denial response indicated surprise (phrased positively or negatively) at the adult actor’s response. The denial response was correct for the inconsistent contexts, but incorrect for the consistent contexts. The first analysis of the responses in the Inconsistent contexts was a 3 (Grade) x 2 (Temporal Location) x 2 (Contiguity) x 3 (Resolution Type) mixed analysis of variance, with the last factor within subjects. There were no significant effects in this analysis. The second analysis, focusing on consistency, compared the mean number of correct denial responses to the inconsistent stories for each subject with the number of incorrect denial responses for the consistent paragraphs in a 3 (Grade) x 2 (Context Type: Consistent or Inconsistent) mixed analysis of variance, with the last factor within subjects. This TABLE MEAN

-..~~

2

PERCENT DENIAL RESPONSES TO THE EXPECTATION QUESTIONS FOR THE CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT CONTEXTS FOR EACH KIND AND LOCATION OF THE RESOLVING INFORMATION --. .--

Adjacent Grade First Indirect Resolving” Direct Resolving” Nonresolving” Consistent Fourth Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Nonresolving Consistent College Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Nonresolving Consistent o Inconsistent contexts.

Before 90.6 87.5 84.4 10.4 93.8 93.8

87.5 33.3 96.9 84.4

100.0 2.1

Separated After

Before

After ._____-

93.8

90.6

100.00

87.5 90.6 33.3

93.8 93.8

84.4 10.4 90.6 90.6 90.6 20.9

100.00

93.8 93.8 90.6 14.6

93.8 81.3 96.9 22.1

90.6

100.0 8.3

Mean

10.4

92.2 92.2 91.4 16.1

90.6 93.8 96.9 16.7

93.8 92.2 93.8 17.7

90.6

93.8 89.9 96.9 17.0

100.0

100.0 100.0 29.1

COMPREHENSION

313

REPAIR

analysis collapsed across the temporal location and contiguity variables because the consistency relation was independent of the systematic variation of the location of the resolution information, and there was no theoretical reason to expect significant variation in the denial responses as a function of these variables, It may be seen in Table 2 that the denial responses varied minimally and nonsystematically with temporal location and contiguity. The only significant effect in this analysis was that denial responses for the Inconsistent contexts exceeded those for the Consistent contexts, as anticipated, F(1, 141) = 1436.0, p < .OOl, MS, = .43. There was little systematic variation between the responses of the subjects in the different grades for either kind of context. Resolution

Question

The data were scored in terms of the number of answers indicating acceptance of the resolution information. These answers were, in effect, the opposite of the answers to the Expectation questions. Hence, they represented a change of the subject’s perception based on the fact that the resolution information solved the comprehension problem in the inconsistent paragraphs. The mean percentages of acceptance answers can be seen in Table 3. Note that for the consistent contexts, the resolving information is irrelevant: there was no inconsistency to be resolved. TABLE

3

MEAN PERCENT ACCEPTANCE RESPONSES TO THE RESOLUTION QUESTIONS FOR THE CONSISTENT AND INCONSISTENT CONTEXTS FOR EACH KIND AND LOCATION OF THE RESOLVING INFORMATION

Adjacent Grade

Separated

Before

After

Before

After

Mean

First Indirect Resolving” Direct Resolving” Nonresolving” Consistent

33.3 39.6 8.3 100.0

33.3 62.5 8.3 75.0

12.5 10.4 22.9 79.2

31.3 37.5 0.0 87.5

27.6 37.5 9.9 85.4

Fourth Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Nonresolving Consistent

43.8 54.2 18.8 69.9

62.5 85.4 0.0 83.3

8.3 54.2 18.8 95.8

27.1 62.5 0.0 91.7

35.4 64.1 9.4 84.9

College Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Nonresolving Consistent

52.1 62.5 0.0 91.7

72.9 87.5 0.0 90.0

25.0 60.4 6.3 85.4

64.6 70.8 6.3 75.0

53.7 70.3 3.2 85.5

” Inconsistent contexts.

314

BRIAN

P. ACKERMAN

Thus the acceptance responses are appropriate for the Resolution question in these contexts because the questions directly address the consistency, or sensible relation, between the child’s action and the adult’s response. The responses to the consistent contexts are included in the Table because they represent a control for a priori response biases between grades in answering the resolution questions. The major analysis focused directly on the effect of the resolving information. The dependent measure was a corrected score for each subject in which the number of acceptances in the Nonresolving situations was subtracted from the number in each of the Indirect Resolving and Direct Resolving situations for each subject. To avoid an analysis involving negative and positive numbers, the negative scores were converted to zero scores. This occurred four times for each group of children and twice for the adults. The correction was used for two reasons. First, the small grade differences in Nonresolving acceptances probably reflect differences in guessing criteria since these acceptances were not motivated by the story information and the subjects were encouraged to guess if the question answer was not known. Subtracting these acceptances then corrects the grade differences in appropriate acceptances in Resolving situations for guessing. Second, contrasting acceptances in the Resolving and Nonresolving situations results in inflated patterns of statistical significance, due to the increased variance attributable to the Resolution Type variable, and reduced error terms. These results increase the chances of finding spurious differences between the effects of the focal Direct and Indirect Resolution information manipulations. It should be noted that an analysis was also performed on uncorrected data contrasting Resolving and Nonresolving acceptances, and the results were similar to the results reported below. The mean percent correct scores can be seen in Table 4. The corrected data were analyzed twice by means of 3 (Grade) x 2 (Temporal Location) x 2 (Contiguity) x 2 (Resolving Type: Indirect Resolving versus Direct Resolving) mixed analyses of variance, with the last factor within subjects. One analysis was of the conditional probabilities of an acceptance response given a denial response to the Expectation question. The other was of the total number of corrected acceptance responses. Since these analyses produced the same results, only the latter analysis is reported. The analysis showed several age-invariant effects. In general, acceptances occurred more frequently in the Adjacent (mean percent correct = 53.1) than in the Separated (32.8) condition, F(1, 132) = 55.79, p < .OOl, MS, = .85, in the After (55.7) than in the Before (30.2) temporal location, F(1, 132) = 88.06, p < .OOl, MS, .85, and for the Direct (51.2) than and for the Indirect (34.7) Resolving Information, F( 1, 132) = 115.22, p < .OOl, MS, = .27. There were no two-way interactions of these variables, F’s(l) 132) c 1.54, but there was a three-way contiguity X temporal location

COMPREHENSION TABLE MEAN

PERCENTCORRECTED

ACCEPTANCE THE INCONSISTENT CONTEXTS

315

REPAIR 4

RESPONSES TO THE RESOLUTION QUESTIONS FOR THE RESOLVING INFORMATION

Adjacent Grade First Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Mean Fourth Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Mean College Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Mean Summary mean Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving

FOR

Separated

Before

After

Before

After

27.1 33.3 30.2

29.2 56.3 42.8

8.3 0.0 4.2

31.3 37.5 34.4

29.2 39.6 34.4

62.5 85.4 74.0

0.0 35.4 17.7

27.1 62.5 44.8

52.1 62.5 57.3

72.9 87.5 80.2

20.8 54.2 37.5

60.4 64.6 62.5

36.1 45.1

54.9 76.4

9.7 29.9

39.6 54.9

x resolving information interaction, F(1, 132) = 7.94, p < .OI, MS, = .27, best seen in the summary Mean rows in Table 4. This interaction can be understood by assuming that performance decrements are due to increments of storage and processing complexity, illustrated in the main effects above. The no increment reference situation is the Adjacent/After situation involving Direct Resolving information. By hypothesis, the contiguity manipulation affects storage while the other variables affect processing. The lack of two-way interactions indicates that these complexity increments have independent and additive effects in two-variable combinations. Performance decreased linearly with the addition of one or two increments. However, adding a third increment led to decrements that are neither additive nor predictable from any of the effects associated with individual variables. The three-way interaction then was due to the disproportionately low acceptance rates in the three-increment Separated/ Before contexts for Indirect Resolving information. The simple effects analysis showed this best in that there was a contiguity x temporal location interaction for the Indirect but not for the Direct Resolving information. The Indirect information adds a third complexity increment to the Separated/Before contexts. For all contexts containing Direct information the complexity load never exceeds two increments. There were also several interactions involving grade, including grade x contiguity x temporal location, F(2, 132) = 3.33, p < .05, MS, = .85, grade x temporal location x resolution type, F(2, 132) = 8.22, p <

316

BRIAN

P. ACKERMAN

.OOl, MS, = .27, and grade x contiguity x resolution type, F(2, 132) = 12.12, p < .OOl, MS, = .27. To gain a better understanding of these interactions, the data for each grade were analyzed separately in independent 2 (Temporal Location) x 2 (Contiguity x 2 (Resolution Type) mixed analyses of variance. A summary of these analyses can be seen in Table 5. The results of these analyses can be understood best by comparing the cell entries against the Means rows entries for each grade and then against the summary Mean rows in Table 4. The simple effects results revealed the following trends. First, as shown by the main effects in Table 5, for all grades each kind of complexity increment penalized performance. This can be seen by comparing acceptance rates in the least complex situation (Adjacent/After contexts with Direct Resolving information), within each grade independently with the situations involving one compexity increment (e.g., Separated/After contexts with Direct Resolving information). Second, as shown in Table 5, and in the grade x contiguity x temporal location interaction, for the fourth graders and adults overall the contiguity and temporal location complexity increments did not interact and were associated with independent performance decrements. As shown in the Mean rows in Table 4, doubling the complexity increments roughly doubled the performance penalty. For the first graders, however, these factors interacted, such that the complexity increments associated with the joint combination of the factors (Separated/Before condition) reduced performance to chance levels. This was true for both kinds of resolving information, t’s (I 1) < 1.0. Chance here is represented TABLE SUMMARY

OF THE SIGNIFICANT

EFFECTS

5

OF THE INDIVIDUAL

ANALYSES

OF EACH

GRADE

OF

THE CORRECTEDACCEPTANCESTO THE RESOLUTIONQUESTION F value Source Contiguity (A) Temporal location (B) AxB

Resolution type (C) AxC BxC AxBxC

First

Fourth

College

16.43”

25.38 4.38%

29.91 42.13 -

13.85 22.61 -

9.32 12.03 12.03

82.93 10.76 -

31.22 5.9.5**

-

-

10.60

” Unless otherwise indicated, the values were significant at least at the p < ,005 level. I,44 for all F values. * p < .05.

df =

** p < .025.

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by a 0% frequency of corrected acceptances2 This can be seen in Table 4, and is shown in the simple effects analysis of the grade interaction by the fact that grade differences were significantly larger for the Separated and Before placements than for the other placements. Third, as shown by the interactions in Table 5, for adults the complexity increment associated with resolution type had effects independent of those for the storage increment (contiguity), but not of those for the other processing increment (temporal location). The combination of the two processing increments had an especially deleterious effect on performance. Fourth, for the Fourth graders, on the other hand, the resolution type processing variable interacted with the contiguity storage variable, but not with the other processing variable. Fifth, as shown in Table 5, for the first graders, the processing increments interacted with each other and separately with the storage increment. However, the absence of a three-way interaction among the variables makes interpretation of these effects problematic. As shown by the analysis of simple effects, there were larger differences for Direct than for Indirect information for the other variables in the interactions involving Resolution Type. Planned individual comparisons illuminated the nature of these effects by showing that acceptance of the Direct Resolving information varied inversely with the number of complexity increments of the other variables. That is, performance deteriorated significantly with each complexity load increase. This pattern was similar to that for the older subjects. However, for the Indirect Resolving information, while acceptance was at a chance level in the double increment Separated/Before contexts, the acceptance rate did not vary in situations of one or no complexity increments. Finally, the age trends in the three-way interactions showed that developmental differences in acceptance rates seem to be smallest in the situations of the least and most complexity. So, for example, acceptance rates were high, and there were few rate differences between the fourth graders and adults in the Adjacent/After contexts for the Direct Resolving information, and acceptance rates were low, with few differences, in the Separated/Before contexts for the Indirect Resolving information. Developmental differences were largest in the situations of moderate com’ An alternative measure of chance is the probability of a random “yes” or “no” answer to a resolution question, p = 30. Against this measure, none of the corrected or uncorrected acceptance rates of the first graders exceed chance. However, this measure is insensitive to the fact that there are significant differences between complexity increments, that most of the acceptance rates are significantly below the 50% level, and that performance trends are directed in that they tend toward zero (not 50%) when task difficulty increases. The 0% measure is more powerful in that it seems to better represent the subjects’ baseline criterion to ignore or reject the resolution information when in doubt, and stay with the inconsistent interpretation of the story information. In other words, a measure of chance must be used that reflects the subjects’ a priori bias to reject the resolving information.

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plexity featuring one or two complexity increments. The exceptions to these trends, as shown by planned comparisons, were that fourth grade performance equaled that of the adults in situations involving single increments of inferential (Adjacent/After contexts with Indirect Resolving information) or storage (Separated/After contexts with Direct Resolving information) complexity. A second analysis compared acceptance responses to the resolution question in the consistent contexts versus acceptance responses in the inconsistent contexts. These analyses were used to determine if there were a priori response differences or biases between grades for particular answers to the resolution questions. For example, the Nonresolving information was the same across context type. A bias in accepting this information in the inconsistent contexts that could distort the results of the above analyses can be detected by a comparison of responses in the consistent and inconsistent contexts. However, as can be seen in Table 3, there were no significant differences between grades in accepting the resolution questions in the consistent contexts (mean percent of acceptance responses equaled 85.4, 84.9 and 85.5 for the first and fourth graders, and college students, respectively). Memory

A univariate analysis of variance showed that the numbers of correct answers for the college adults (94.3% correct) did not differ from those of the fourth graders (91.2% correct) but the correct answers of both of these older groups did exceed those of the first graders (87.5% correct). F(2, 141) = 57.77, p < .OOl, MS, = .33. These differences in answering the memory questions, then, are reliable but small. This suggests that content memory differences did not contribute substantially to the repair performance differences between grades. To test the relation between working memory capacity and repair performance, the working memory scores for each subject were correlated with a summary measure of the subject’s resolution acceptances in each temporal location and contiguity contextual condition. The summary measure was simply the sum total of the Indirect and Direct Resolving information corrected acceptances. These were summed because there was not sufficient variability in the acceptances for either type of information alone for the children to allow significant correlations. A summary of the significant correlations can be seen in Table 6. One interpretation of this table is that working memory was related to performance for the adults only in the Separated/Before context, and for the children in all contexts other than the Adjacent/After context. The correlation for the first graders in the Separated/Before context was not significant because the combined number of corrected resolution acceptances was too small to yield sufficient individual variation. Because

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of the restricted range of the performance should be interpreted cautiously.

measures, these correlations

Discussion Detection and Evaluation Performance Several preliminary questions must be answered to interpret the results concerning repair processes. First, could developmental differences in detecting the comprehension problems have contributed to the response patterns for the resolution questions. The analysis comparing answers to the Expectation questions for the consistent and inconsistent stories showed no differences for grade, suggesting there were no developmental differences in problem detection. Note that this result disagrees with Markman’s (1979) findings but it is consistent with other reported results (Ackerman, 1981a, 1981b, 1983b). Second, the design of this experiment made it possible that resolution information could have affected responses to the Expectation questions. However, again there were no differences in Expectation question responses attributable to resolution type, contiguity, or temporal location. Moreover, the percentages of denial responses to the Expectation questions were consistently around 90 or better for both resolving and Nonresolving information, indicating the subjects recognized the existence of a problem independent of the resolution information. Finally, Ackerman (1982a) employed a design probing expectation information before resolution information was given. Similar results were obtained. This design was not used in this experiment because it prohibited comparison of equivalent Before and After temporal location conditions. Third, could developmental differences in answering the resolution questions have been due to response biases? Response biases are impossible to discount totally. However, performance between the grades was similar TABLE SIGNIFICANT

PEARSON

PRODUCT-MOMENT

6 CORRELATION

COEFFICIENTS

Adjacent Grade

Before

First Fourth College Note. * ** *** ****

df = 11. p p p p

< .05. < .025. < .Ol. < .005.

Separated After

.58*

-

.61** -

-

Before

After

.57**

.84**** .51*

.64***

-

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on acceptance responses for the Nonresolving inconsistent and on the consistent stories, so it is unlikely general systematic biases contributed to the results. Given these results, the data indicate that the children and adults were equally likely to detect the problem states in the inconsistent stories. Consequently, any developmental differences in answering the Resolution questions should be due only to differences in evaluation or repair processes. Evaluation processes could not be examined independently in this experiment. However, the significant developmental differences in answering the Resolution questions that resulted from the experimental manipulations indicate there are systematic differences in repairing comprehension problems, centering on difficulties in integrating problem and resolution information, independent of any evaluation differences. Repair

Performance

The results support several general conclusions about repair performance. First, subjects in all grades accepted the Resolution questions more often for resolving than Nonresolving information. Even the first graders were able to repair the comprehension problems to some extent. However, the difference in resolution acceptances between the resolving and Nonresolving information increased with grade, indicating the older subjects resolved the comprehension problems more efficiently than did the younger subjects. Second, for all groups resolution acceptances were more frequent for Direct than for Indirect Resolving information. This suggests that integrating Indirect information and the problem state imposed more processing or computational demands than did integrating Direct information and the problem state. By hypothesis, this was due to the inferential distance of the Indirect information. An alternative explanation is that the Indirect information was simply irrelevant in general. This explanation lacks force because there were relatively high acceptance rates in the least complex Adjacent/After contexts, at least for the fourth grade and college groups. This indicates these subjects generally considered the Indirect Resolving information to be relevant. Third, the responses of all the groups were affected by both the contiguity and temporal location of the resolving information. The higher acceptance rate in the Adjacent relative to the Separated contexts indicates that information availability in working memory affects problem and resolution information integration. Similar results have been reported by Glanzer et al. (1981). Similarly, there was a higher acceptance rate for the After than for the Before temporal locations. This result indicates both that repair is facilitated when the problem state is represented first, perhaps because the relevance of resolution information can be determined immediately, and that reaccess or reinterpretation of resolution information imposes significant processing demands.

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Fourth, in general the contiguity, temporal location, and resolution type complexity increments were associated with independent and additive decrements in repair performance through two-factor combinations of these variables. However, the combination of all three increments had a nonadditive effect and was associated with chance levels of performance. These trends suggest first, that the three-increment load represented a floor on performance in this experiment. Second, repair performance may vary inversely and linearly with complexity load, until the performance floor is reached. Fifth, the nature of the performance floor in each grade was revealed by the three-way interactions involving grade, and the individual grade analyses. Some general comments first: Relative to adult performance, first graders had difficulty using both the Direct and Indirect Resolution information, while fourth graders had difficulty only with the Indirect Resolution information. In addition, developmental differences were minimized in the situations of minimum and maximum storage and processing complexity. This suggests children perform well in resolving inconsistencies in situations of minimal complexity, and everybody does poorly when the complexity approaches the performance floor. Developmental differences may be largest in situations of moderate complexity. Specific performance limitations for each grade in these kinds of situations can only be broadly described at this point. For example, the performances of the first graders in the Separated/Before condition was not better than chance for either the Direct or Indirect Resolving information, indicating that the children could not meet the computational demands of the two(Direct information) or three (Indirect information) load combinations of these storage and reprocessing complexity increments. Note that this cannot be attributed to either storage or processing alone, since performance exceeded chance in the Separated/After contexts with equal storage demands, and the Adjacent/Before contexts with equal reprocessing demands. The performances of the older subjects were also degraded in the Separated/ Before contexts, but only acceptances for the Indirect Resolving information approached chance levels. The first graders also had similar acceptance rates for the Direct and Indirect Resolving information that exceeded chance response levels in all contexts other than the Adjacent/After contexts, where the rate was higher for the Direct than for the Indirect information. The reason these children could meet the demands of two-load increments (Indirect information plus another increment) in one situation but not another is unclear. The inconsistency suggests that the increments either differ in information processing complexity demands, which is likely, or interact in specific unknown ways. Similarly, the similar treatment of the first graders of the Direct and Indirect Resolving information except in Adjacent/

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After contexts, is a puzzle, since the older subjects always had a higher rate of acceptances for the direct information. Finally, there seemed to be a limitation on the first grade children’s repair performance in the least complex Adjacent/After contexts even for the Direct Resolving information. The reason for this is examined more fully in Experiments 3 and 4. In this experiment, the performance limitation in this baseline condition makes it diflicult to determine whether the first graders were affected differently from the other subjects in situations of single storage or processing complexity increments. In contrast, performance for the fourth graders was excellent in situations of reduced processing and storage complexity. For example there were no acceptance rate differences between fourth graders and the adults in the Adjacent/After contexts for either the Direct or Indirect Resolving information, or for the Direct Resolving information in the Separated/ After contexts. There were large differences otherwise. These patterns indicate that the inferential processing and storage complexity increments were functionally equivalent for the fourth graders and adults. However, the reprocessing increment affected the fourth graders more than it did the adults. In addition combinations of any two increments affected the fourth graders more than the adults. The performance of the adult group was seriously impaired only in the three-increment Separated/Before contexts with Indirect Resolving information situations. Finally, the increments interacted in different ways for the fourth graders and adults. For the adults, inferential processing complexity interacted with reprocessing complexity (temporal location), but not with storage complexity (contiguity). In addition, for both groups reprocessing complexity was independent of storage complexity. These effects support the hypothesis that storage and processing are independent components of discourse comprehension, and that inferential and reprocessing operations are related in some way for adults. However, for the fourth graders inferential complexity interacted with storage, but not with reprocessing complexity. The later finding may be an artifact of floor effects involving the Indirect Resolving information. Otherwise the pattern difference between the fourth graders and adults is interesting but currently inexplicable. Working Memory What was responsible for the ceiling in repair performances in the different context combinations? The correlations between the working memory measure and the corrected numbers of repair suggests that the ability to meet the demands of the complexity increments in repair performance is related in a general way to working memory capacity. For all groups the correlations failed to reach significance in the baseline situations of reduced complexity. in the Adjacent/After contexts. Otherwise,

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the correlations were significant for the children in all contexts (with one exception, explained in the results section). The children with larger measured working memory capacities made more resolution acceptance responses under situations of increased information processing complexity demands than did the children with smaller measured capacities. For the adults, the correlation was significant only in the Separated/Before condition, and this was the only condition in which performance was seriously impaired. Despite these relatively consistent and interpretable results for the Resolution questions, some doubt may remain about the degree to which developmental differences in detection and evaluation contribute to repair differences. In an effort to minimize this doubt, Experiments 2, 3, and 4 were conducted using the stimulus materials, or parts thereof, from Experiment 1. Experiment 2 determined whether kindergarten, first, and third grade children could discriminate between consistent and inconsistent contexts, and thus detect inconsistency. Experiment 3 did the same for resolving and Nonresolving information, with the qualification that the children were told explicitly that all of the contexts were inconsistent and all of the stories contained comprehension problems. It was assumed that this instruction would minimize evaluation differences concerning the importance of the problem information and repair process, and allow a reasonably uncontaminated evaluation of children’s ability to perform a simple repair discrimination judgment. Experiment 4 used the same design as Experiment 1 with instructions similar to those of Experiment 3. EXPERIMENT

2

Subjects Twelve children from each of the kindergarten (mean age = 5;7, range 5;3 to 5;11), first (mean age = 6;8, range 6;4 to 7;2), and third (mean age = 8;10, range 8;2 to 9;l) grades participated. The children were from an elementary school serving a middle income community in Newark, Delaware, different from that used in Experiments 1 and 4. The subjects in this experiment and in Experiment 3 participated 1 full year prior to the completion of Experiments 1 and 4. Design This experiment employed a 3 (Grade: Kindergarten, First, or Third) x 2 (Context: Consistent or Inconsistent) mixed factorial design, with the last factor within subjects. Materials The context and response material in 14 of the stories of Experiment 1 were used as stimulus materials. Two were for pretraining; the other

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twelve were the experimental stimuli. Six of the experimental stories had consistent contexts and six had inconsistent contexts. Two lists of the stories were created so that each story could be read with each kind of context. Story presentation order was randomized for each subject but was the same across lists. Two schematic outlines of faces were drawn on 8+ x 11-in. paper. These were pasted on rigid posterboard in such a way that the faces could stand upright. One face was smiling and had “YES” printed underneath. The other was frowning and had “NO” printed underneath. Procedure

Each subject was assigned to a list and tested individually. Each was told he or she would hear a series of stories. At the end of each story someone does something. For some of the stories the action makes sense and follows from the story; for the other stories, the action makes no sense in that it does not follow and in unexpected. After each story, the subject should point to the smiling face with the “YES” on it if the action makes sense, or the frowning face with the “NO” on it if the action makes no sense and is unexpected. The response procedure was repeated several times and each child’s ability to read, or learn to discriminate, “YES” and “NO” was tested several times. After this, the entire procedure was demonstrated with the two pretraining paragraphs. One of these had a consistent and one an inconsistent context. Then the experimental stimuli were given. After the sixth trial, the subjects were again tested on their knowledge of the response requirements and the words “YES” and “NO.” No answers were corrected for the experimental stimuli. Results and Discussion The data were scored in terms of the numbers of correct assignments of the inconsistent paragraphs to the frowning face, and the consistent paragraphs to the smiling face. List did not contribute to the variance and so was not a factor in the analysis. The data were analyzed by means of a 3 (Grade) x 2 (Context: Consistent or Inconsistent) mixed analysis of variance, with the last factor within subjects. The only significant effect was that the numbers of the correct assignments of the third and first graders were similar (90.3 and 97.2% for the first graders, and 88.9 and 97.2% for the third graders for the consistent and inconsistent contexts, respectively), and significantly greater than those for the kindergarten children (65.3 and 69.7% for the consistent and inconsistent contexts, respectively), F(2, 33) = 38.76, p < .OOl, MS, = .71. A series of t tests against a 50% chance hypothesis showed that the numbers of correct assignments exceeded chance levels at least

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at the p < .OOl level in every case, except for the kindergarten children’s assignments of the inconsistent contexts, t(l1) = 1.30, p > .10. These results show simply that the first and third grade children discriminated between the consistent and inconsistent contexts at a level approaching unity. The results suggest there are no differences in comprehension problem detection with these materials for this age range of children and that detection differences did not contribute to the results of Experiment 1. The reason for the small difference in consistent and inconsistent context assignments is unknown. EXPERIMENT

3

Subjects

Twelve children from each of the kindergarten (mean age = 5;11, range 5;3 to 6;10), first (mean age = 6;8, range 6;5 to 7;2), and third (mean age 8;10, range 8;3 to 9;2) grades participated. The subjects were taken from the elementary school used in Experiment 2. Design

The experiment varied three grades and two kinds of Resolution formation (Direct Resolving vs Nonresolving).

In-

The parts of each of the 14 stories that described inconsistent happenings in Experiment 1 and 2 were used in this experiment. Twelve of the paragraphs were experimental stimuli; the remaining two were used for pretraining. In this experiment, both kinds of resolving information were used for each story. The phrasing of each kind of resolution information was changed into a statement of the form, “The (UC&W’s name) did that because ---.-.” The space after “because” contained the resolving information from Experiment 1. Two lists of stories were generated so that the serial position of the two types of resolving information could be balanced. Half the stories had the Direct Resolving statements first and the Nonresolving statement second, and half had the reverse ordering, in each list. Two young girls were drawn on 8; by 11-in. paper. The drawings were and were attached to stiff posterboard labeled “Nancy” and “Alice,” in such a way that the drawings could stand in a semivertical position. Two orders of each list of the stories were generated so that Nancy and Alice could be associated with the same resolving information for each story across the lists. Three different random story presentation orders were created. The same random order was used for one subject in each list and order combination.

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BRIAN P. ACKERMAN

Procedure

Each subject was assigned randomly to a story list and order and presentation order. Each was introduced initially to the two speakers. Nancy and Alice, and told that the girls were best friends, but had different views about everything. The subject would be read short stories that contained a surprise ending. In each ending something unexpected would happen. Then Nancy and Alice would each try to explain the surprise. Their versions would differ and one would be right and one would be wrong. Sometimes Nancy would be right and sometimes Alice would be. The subject’s job was to figure out who was right and tell whether it was Nancy or Alice. The subjects were instructed to guess if they could not figure out the answer. Each subject was then given two pretraining paragraphs, to illustrate the procedure, and was trained carefully to distinguish between Nancy and Alice. The answers were corrected and explained for these paragraphs. Following this the experimental paragraphs, each with the two kinds of resolving information counterbalanced for order, were read. Each kind of resolving statement was prefaced by the statement “Alice said that -” or “Nancy said that -.” As each statement was read the experimenter pointed to the drawing of the appropriate speaker. No feedback was given for any answer. Results and Discussion The numbers of correct choices of the resolving information were scored. Again, list was excluded from the analysis. The data were analyzed by means of a univariate analysis of variance with grade as the factor. The analysis showed that the third graders made more correct choices of the resolving information (93.1%) than did either the first graders (75.0%) or the kindergarten children (71.5%), F(2, 33) = 4.73, p < .OOl, MS, = 2.45. The numbers of correct choices were significantly above chance for all grades, t’s(l1) 3 3.98, p’s < .OOl. Given that the instructions alerted the children to the comprehension problems and minimized evaluation differences involved in determining if inconsistency represents a comprehension problem and requires resolution, the present results can be interpreted as reflecting only differences in judging the relevance of repair information and in integrating problem and repair information. There were two empirical findings of interest. First, the first graders did discriminate between the resolving and Nonresolving information, but did so less successfully than did the third graders. Second, the third graders’ discrimination performance approached unity in this experiment. These results have three implications. First, the results for the third graders are similar to the results for the fourth graders for the Direct

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Resolving information in the Adjacent/After contexts in Experiment 1. The pattern suggests that children in these grades have little difficulty repairing comprehension problems in situations of minimal storage and processing complexity. The pattern also suggests that problems in evaluating the relevance of the resolution information were not a major determinant of the fourth graders performance in Experiment 1. Second, the discriminations of the first graders showed that there is no in principle incapacity to integrate problem and repair information and solve comprehension problems in these children. However, third, repair integration and problem resolution are limited for these materials by problems of determining and evaluating the relevance of resolution information. These problems may set a constant ceiling on the children’s repair performance. EXPERIMENT

4

Given the results of Experiment 3, it is of interest to assess the effects of instructions that highlight the problematic nature of the inconsistent paragraphs on performance on the materials and task used in Experiment 1. This is the purpose of this experiment. It was assumed, as in Experiment 3, that the instructions would minimize certain evaluation differences among grades by explicitly casting inconsistency as a comprehension problem in need of repair information available in many of the stories. Note that these instructions do not eliminate potential differences in evaluating the specific relevance of the resolving information. Experiment 3 established that these differences exist in first graders and probably contributed to the developmental differences in repair performance in Experiment 1, although independently of the focal complexity manipulations. What the instructions do is ensure that all subjects know that the inconsistencies should be attended to, and that some other information in the paragraphs may be relevant to the inconsistency and should be searched for. Method Subjects

Forty-eight children from each of the first (mean age = 6;8, range 6;4 to 7;O) and fourth (mean age 9;6, range 8;8 to 1O;l) grades and fortyeight college adults participated. The subjects were drawn from the same populations as in Experiment 1, but none had participated in Experiment 1. The subjects participated in this experiment in every case less than 2 months after their grade peers participated in Experiment 1. Design

and Material

The design and materials

were the same as in Experiment

I.

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Procedure

The general procedure was the same as in Experiment 1. The same experimenter conducted both experiments. The exceptions were the instructions to the subjects, and the pretraining. Each subject was told explicitly that in many of the stories something strange and unexpected would happen. In particular, a child would do something and an adult would respond in an unexpected or unusual way. However, in many of these stories information would be given that would allow the subject to understand the reason for the adult’s response. The subjects had to try and figure out the reason for the adult’s response. The procedure was demonstrated with the two pretraining paragraphs. Each paragraph contained an inconsistent context with direct resolving information. In one of the paragraphs, the resolving information was adjacent to and before the adults response. In the other, the resolving information was separated from and after the adults’s response. Each subject’s answers to the pretraining questions were corrected, and the reasons for the correct answers were explained carefully. Results and Discussion

Preliminary analyses showed that list and whether the question took “yes” or “no” answers did not contribute significantly to the variance, so these factors were excluded from succeeding analyses. Since the focus of the experiment was on the effect of the instructional manipulation on responses to the Expectation and Resolution questions, the primary analyses of this experiment compared responses on these questions to the corresponding responses in Experiment 1. The Experiment 1 responses, then, served as the instructional control. Independent analyses of the denial responses to the Expectation questions were conducted for each grade by means of 2 (Experiment: 1 or 4) x 2 (Temporal Location) x 2 (Contiguity) x 3 (Resolution type Indirect Resolving, Direct Resolving, or Nonresolving) mixed analyses of variance, with the last factor within subjects. There were no effects for the Experiment variable, indicating that the different kinds of instructions did not affect responses to the Expectation questions. This is not surprising since the numbers of the denial response were at ceiling in both Experiments. Independent analyses of the corrected numbers of acceptance responses to the Resolution questions were conducted for each grade, by means of 2 (Experiment 1 or 4) x 2 (Temporal Location) x 2 (Contiguity) X 2 (Resolution Type: Indirect Resolving or Direct Resolving) mixed analyses of variance, with the last factor within subjects. There were no differences for the Experiment variable for the first grade children. However, there were substantial differences for the older subjects. The mean percent acceptance responses for the older subjects can be seen in Table 7.

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TABLE 7 MEAN PERCENT ACCEPTANCERESPONSESTO THE RESOLUTION ADULTS

QUESTIONS FOR THE FOURTH FOR THE INCONSISTENT CONTEXTS

Adjacent

Separated

GRADERS AND COLLEGE

Fourth Experiment 4 Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Experiment 1 Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving College Experiment 4 Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving Experiment 1 Indirect Resolving Direct Resolving

Before

After

Before

After

Mean

52.1 62.5

66.7 87.5

6.3 50.0

27.1 62.5

38.1 65.6

29.2 39.6

62.5 85.4

0.0 35.4

27.1 62.5

29.7 55.7

60.4 89.6

79.2 91.7

60.4 60.4

79.2 85.4

69.8 81.8

52.1 62.5

72.9 87.5

20.8 54.2

60.4 64.6

51.6 67.2

For the fourth graders, the effects involving the experimental variable were an experiment x contiguity interaction, F(1, 88 = 3.99, p < .05, MS, = .89, and an experiment x temporal location interaction, F(1, 88) = 6.00, p < .025, MS, = .89. As shown by analyses of simple effects, the sum of these interactions is that the instructions in Experiment 4 were associated with an increase in corrected acceptance responses, relative to Experiment 1, in the Adjacent, but not the Separated contexts, and in the Before but not the After contexts. Inspection of Table 7 indicates that these effects are attributable to the greater frequency of acceptance responses in Experiment 4 in the Adjacent/Before context. For the adults, there was generally a higher rate of acceptance responses in Experiment 4 than in Experiment 1, F(1, 88) = 13.90, p < .OOl, MS, = .97. As shown by the four-way interaction of experiment x temporal location X contiguity X resolution type, F(1, 88) = 11.53, p < .OOl, MS, = .268, however, the effect was variable. Planned individual comparison showed that the following effects contributed to this interaction: (1) The acceptance rate for Indirect Resolving information increased significantly in Experiment 4 relative to Experiment 1 in the Separated/ Before contexts, while that of the Direct Resolving information did not change. (2) The opposite pattern for Resolution type was true for the Adjacent/Before contexts, to the extent that acceptance responses for the Direct Resolving information in this context did not differ from ac-

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ceptances in the Adjacent/After context. (3) Acceptance responses for both kinds of resolving information increased in the Separated/After contexts. The main conclusion to be drawn from these results that differs from the conclusions of Experiment 1 concerns developmental patterns: the responses of the first graders did not change as a function of the instructions in Experiment 4; the responses of the fourth graders changed in only one context, a context representing moderate complexity demands for the fourth graders in Experiment 1; the responses of the adults changed in most of the contexts. These patterns suggest first that the evaluation problems minimized in this experiment were not responsible for most of the developmental differences in repair performance in Experiment 1. Second, alerting listeners to the existence of possible comprehension problems may improve performance. Third, performance floors seem to limit performance improvement for children, but not for adults. In contrast to the children, the adults benefited from the instructions even in the three-increment situations of greatest complexity. This suggests either that the adults’ computational limit was not reached in any situation in Experiment 1, or the adults raised their functional limit by means of some sort of strategic intervention. In either case, they made use of the instructions to more efficiently meet the demands of the complexity increments. One problem with this third point is that if performance complexity limits improvement performance should have improved with instructions for all grades in the contexts representing reduced working memory demands. Experiment 1 indicates that the Adjacent/After context imposed the least demands, yet performance did not improve in Experiment 4 for any group in this context. However, this is probably due to the fact that the responses may have been at a measurement ceiling in Experiment 1. Ceiling here must be defined relative to grade level and the stimulus materials. For example, the response of the fourth graders and the adults approached unity for the Direct Resolving information in Experiment 1, and so could not improve much in Experiment 4. The mean acceptance rate for the first graders for the Direct Resolving Information was only 62.5% in Experiment 1, and could be expected to improve. However, Experiment 3 showed that even in a simple discrimination task, the upper limit of first graders’ resolution performance was about 75%. Assuming this is ceiling for these children, again there was little room for improvement in Experiment 4. Finally two additional analyses were performed comparing responses in the consistent contexts, and correlating the working memory scores with answers to the resolution question. Regarding the former, there were no significant differences in any grade for the Experiment variable. Regarding the latter, a similar pattern of significant correlations were

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found for this experiment as displayed in Table 6 for Experiment 1, except that no correlations were significant for the adults. The memory correlations again indicate there is a relation between working memory capacity and information processing repair. In addition the difference in the adult correlations in the two experiments suggests that functional expansions in working memory capacity limitations were related to performance improvement in this experiment. GENERAL

DISCUSSION

The focus of the present set of experiments was on children’s repair of episodes of comprehension failure. To investigate this issue, an effort was made to minimize inconsistency detection and evaluation differences that might contribute to developmental trends. The experiments are important because few studies have examined children’s repair processes or attempted to distinguish between detection, evaluation, and repair deficiencies. In all the experiments, materials were used that have been shown previously (Ackerman, 1982a) to result in few developmental differences in detection of inconsistency. In addition, Experiments 1 and 4 showed no developmental differences in responding to the Expectation questions, and hence no measured differences in inconsistency detection, and Experiment 2 showed nearly perfect discrimination between inconsistent and consistent stories in first and third graders. Similarly, concerning evaluation, systematic developmental differences in comprehension repair remained even after the demands of certain aspects of the evaluation process were minimized in Experiments 3 and 4. Other aspects may have been responsible for a constant decrement in the repair performance of the first graders, but this decrement was independent of the performance changes associated with the complexity manipulations. On the basis of these results, it is reasonable to conclude that a priori differences in detection and evaluation were not responsible for the focal repair results. Regardless of the outcome for detection and evaluation processes the differential effects of variables designed to affect repair efficiency may serve as realiable indicators of developmental differences in repair processes. Repair of the kind of comprehension problem used in this study seems to require several processes. First, the comprehension problem and resolution information have to be represented and maintained. Second, the specific relevance of the resolution information has to be determined. Third, the problem information and relevant aspects of the resolution information must be integrated and the problem resolved. Relying on Baddely and Hitch (1974), this study assumes that each of these processes consumes information processing resources. The first process seems to tax storage resources, while the second and third processes tax processing resources. This study manipulated the storage demands by comparing performance under Separated and Adjacent statements of the compre-

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hension problem and resolution information. It manipulated the processing demands associated with the second process by comparing performance under conditions where the relevance of the resolution information was either directly stated or only available inferentially. It manipulated the processing demands associated with the third process by comparing performance under conditions requiring either processing or reprocessing of resolution information in the Before and After temporal contexts. The results of the experiments support several general conclusions. First, first grade children do not resolve the kinds of comprehension problems used in this study as efficiently as do older children and adults, even in situations of minimal storage and processing complexity. This was shown in Experiment 3 and in the Adjacent/After conditions in Experiments 1 and 4. However, second, even first grade children can use direct resolving information to repair a comprehension problem, to some degree, in these situations. Third, the repair performance of fourth graders approaches that of adults even for resolution information requiring considerable inferential activity, in situations of minimal storage and processing demands. Fourth, in general the effects of increments in storage or processing complexity on repair performance degradation varies inversely with age, to the point where performance approaches floor. That is, the performances of younger subjects are more adversely affected than are the performances of older subjects in situations of moderate complexity. In situations of extreme complexity the performances of children and adults tend toward chance. In this study, extreme complexity was operationally defined as involving three complexity increments. Fifth, different kinds of complexity and increment combinations may effect children and adults in different ways. For example, relative to the adults, fourth graders were more adversely affected by increments in reprocessing than in storage complexity in Experiment 1. This kind of pattern suggests that the relation between storage and processing capacity, and the relative weightings of these kinds of complexity increments, may change with age. One possible explanation offered for the children’s repair deficiency in this study centered on the relationship between storage and processing complexity and working memory capacity. The memory correlations suggest that working memory constraints figure strongly in repair performance limitations. However, there are least two interesting problems with any working memory capacity explanation that should be noted. First, it is unclear whether developmental differences should be characterized as absolute differences in capacity, or functional differences resulting from the differential use of storage, processing, and representational strategies. The results of Experiment 4 for adults suggest the latter possibility is viable. In addition, comprehension strategies may differ in that young children are likely to be less familiar than older

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subjects with both the kind of comprehension problems used in this study, and how the resolution information should be represented and related to the problems. The relative lack of familiarity might impose an additional processing burden on the performances of the younger subjects. The results of Experiment 3 support this possibility. Second, it is unclear what was responsible for the developmental differences in the baseline situations of minimum storage and processing complexity. Working memory capacity differences may have been responsible for these performance differences in the sense that processing efficiency may vary with content familiarity and may constrain functional capacity (cf. Case, 1978; Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982). However, the kind and nature of the repair processes themselves are also likely to affect developmental performance differences. For example, 6- and 7-year-old children seem to accept nonliteral and extraliteral interpretations of inconsistent utterances (cf. Ackerman, 1981a, 1981b, 1982b, 1983b) more and less than they correctly accept the resolving information in the present study. So the kind of repair information matters. Similarly, several studies have shown that textual pointers, like the use of anaphora and lexical repetition (cf. Bock & Irwin, 1980), definite and indefinite articles (cf. Irwin, Bock, & Stanovich, 1982), and lexical relationships like “bridging” (cf. Clark & Haviland, 1977) affect information integration across sentences, and so should affect the integration of problem and resolving information. Developmental differences in sensitivity to these textual factors, then, should affect the course of the repair process. In addition, differences in evaluating the importance and relevance of both the comprehension problem and the repair information may contribute to performance differences, as suggested by the results of Experiment 3. Finally, this study assumed that the storage and processing components of repair performance are independent. The statistical independence of these components for the fourth graders, and especially the adults, in Experiment 1 support this assumption. There are likely to be at least two limitations to this independence, however. First, information availability in storage must constrain the amount of information processing or reprocessing that occurs. Second, a performance floor may be reached, as illustrated in Experiment 1, in situations of added storage and processing complexity increments. Other ways in which these storage and processing components interact in situations of moderate total complexity demands but extreme demands on one component, remain to be determined. REFERENCES

Ackerman, B. P. Young children’s understanding of a speaker’s intentional use of a false utterance. Developmental Psychology, 1981, 17, 472-480. (a) Ackerman, B. P. When is a question not answered? The understanding of young children of utterances violating or conforming to the rules of conversational sequencing. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1981, 31. 487-cn7 CL\

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Ackerman, B. P. Children’s use of contextual expectations to detect and resolve comprehension failures. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1982, 33, 65-13. (a) Ackerman, B. P. Contextual integration and utterance interpretation: The ability of children and adults to interpret sarcastic utterances. Child Development, 1982,53, 175-183. (b) Ackerman, B. P. On comprehending idioms: Do children get the picture? Journal of Experimental

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(c)

Ackerman, B. P. Speaker bias in children’s evaluation of the external consistency of statements. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1983, 35, 111-127. (a) Ackerman, B. P. Form and function in children’s understanding of ironic utterances. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1983. 35, 487-508. (b) Baddeley, A. D., & Hitch, G. Working memory. In G. Bower (Ed.) The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8). New York: Academic Press, 1974. Bock, J. K., & Irwin. D. E. Syntactic effects on information availability in sentence production. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1980, 19, 467-484. Case, R., Kurland, D. M., & Goldberg, .I. Operational efficiency and the growth of shortterm memory span. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1982, 33, 386-404. Clark, H. H., & Carlson, T. G. Context for comprehension. In J. Long & A. Baddeley (Eds.), Attention and performance, IX. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1981. Clark, H. H., & Haviland, S. E. Comprehension and the given-new contract. In R. Freedle (Ed.), Discourse, Production and Comprehension. Hillsdale. N.J.: Erlbaum, 1977. Daneman, M., & Carpenter, P. A. Individual differences in working memory and reading. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1980, 19, 450-466. Daneman, M., & Case, R. Syntactic form, semantic complexity and short-term memory: Influences on children’s acquisition of new linguistic structures. Developmental Psychology, 1981, 17, 367-378. Glanzer, M., Dorfman, D., & Kaplan, B. Short-term storage in the processing of text. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1981, 20, 656-670. Harris, P. L.. Kruithof, A.. Terwogt, M. M., & Visser, T. Children’s detection and awareness of textual anomaly. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 1981, 31, 212-230. Irwin, D. E.. Bock, J. K.. & Stanovich, K. E. Effects of information structure use on visual word processing. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 1982, 21, 307-325. Markman, E. M. Realizing that you don’t understand: Elementary school children’s awareness of inconsistencies. Child Development, 1979, 50, 643-655. Patterson, C. J., O’Brien, C., Kister, M. C., Carter, D. B., & Kotsonis, M. E. Development of comprehension monitoring as a function of context. Developmental Pyschology, 1981, 17, 379-389. Singer, J. B.. & Flavell, J. H. Development of knowledge about communication: Children’s evaluations of explicitly ambiguous messages. Child Development, 1981, 52, 121 l1215. Stein, N. L., & Trabasso, T. What’s in a story? An approach to comprehending and instruction. In R. Glasser (Ed.), Advances in the psychology of instruction (Vol. 2). Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1982. Winer, B. J. Statistical principles in experimental design. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. RECEIVED:

April 8, 1982;

REVISED:

September 20, 1982 and May 3, 1983.