PROCESSING OF TOPIC SHIFTS BY ADULTS AND CHILDREN

: HYONA J

Publisher: INT READING ASSOC

: 1994

: Reading Research Quarterly

: READING RESEARCH QUARTERLY

: READ RES QUART

: 29

: 1

: 77

: 88

: 12

: 0034-0553

Previous on-line studies of text processing have established a so-called topic-shift effect: Sentences that initiate a new topic in a text are given additional processing time by skilled adult readers. The present study was designed to investigate this phenomenon further among experienced and less experienced readers. In Experiment 1, the processing of topic shifts was examined among adult readers and fifth graders of at least average comprehension ability; in Experiment 2, adults were contrasted with good and poor fifth-grade comprehenders. Two modes of text presentation were applied: one where topic boundaries were visually signalled by paragraphing, and another where sentences appeared individually on the computer screen. Both experiments established a highly reliable topic-shift effect for each subject group. Adults were shown to manifest a proportionately greater effect than fifth graders when more difficult expository texts were used, but not with easy narratives. Paragraph marking did not influence the processing of topic shifts.