Generating inferences in oral text comprehension : a study on preschool children

Abstract

This study investigated inferential comprehension of oral text in preschoolers and its relationship with working memory and receptive ability. Forty-eight preschoolers age ranging from 3;00-5;11participated in the study. They listened to four stories and answered all together twenty-four inferential questions; with twelve questions for knowledge-based and text-based inference each. Within text-based inference, four questions were asked on each causal, referential and character’s emotion inference. The result showed children’s ability in generating inference improved with increase age. Additional, the children performed better in generating text-based than knowledge-based inference. Regarding the three types of text-based inference, there was a significant interaction effect. Early emergency of causal and character’s emotion inference was noted at age 4 while development of referential inference started at age 5.Multiple regressions suggested working memory and receptive ability makes unique contribution in inference generation. Suggestions for further research were made.