Reading strategies for children and adults: Some empirical evidence

Task-linked reading strategies were studied in adults and fifth graders who read sentences for retention (verbatim recall) or for comprehension (true—false responses to statements). Word-by-word reading times (RTs) were analyzed for nine linguistic indices that reflect the coding of individual words, of structure, and of meaning. For the recall task, the adult RTs primarily reflected the syntactic structure, as illustrated by prolonged phrase boundary RTs, and significant RT differences between lexical and copular verbs, and between sentences with and without embedded relative clauses. For the comprehension task, the adult RTs primarily reflected the semantic content, as illustrated by semantic integration and facilitation scores. However, for children, both the structure and meaning indices were higher for recall than comprehension subjects. Further, children from both task groups appear to use reading strategies that involve mixtures of adult components.