Reading Comprehension Flashcards

A student with dyslexia reads the sentence: 'The expedition, though arduous, yielded unprecedented discoveries.' The student correctly decodes all words but cannot explain what the sentence means. According to the Simple View of Reading, which component is the primary breakdown point?

Answer: Language comprehension

The Simple View of Reading (Gough & Tunmer, 1986) frames reading comprehension as the product of decoding × language comprehension. Since the student decodes all words accurately, the deficit lies in language comprehension — the ability to derive meaning from the decoded language. Orthographic mapping and phonological decoding are intact here; working memory is not a direct component of the Simple View formula.

Which type of inference requires the reader to draw on knowledge entirely outside the text and is most likely to differentiate skilled from less-skilled comprehenders at the advanced level?

Answer: Elaborative inference

Elaborative (or elaboration) inferences go beyond what is explicitly stated or necessary for basic coherence — they enrich the mental model using background knowledge not cued by the text. They are the most demanding type and most sharply separate skilled from less-skilled comprehenders. Anaphoric and causal bridging inferences are text-connecting (local coherence) inferences required for basic comprehension, while cohesive inferences maintain textual reference chains.

A CALT is working with a 12-year-old who produces adequate literal recall but consistently misidentifies the author's purpose and fails inferential questions requiring detection of irony or sarcasm. This profile most specifically implicates a weakness in which reading comprehension sub-skill?

Answer: Theory of Mind and pragmatic language processing

Detecting irony and sarcasm requires understanding that the speaker's or author's intended meaning differs from the literal words — a quintessential Theory of Mind task embedded in pragmatic language. Literal recall being intact rules out basic decoding or text-structure issues. Morphological awareness affects word-level meaning, not speaker intent. Metacognitive monitoring relates to comprehension checking, not the social-cognitive demand of inferring non-literal intent.

According to Kintsch's Construction-Integration (CI) model, a reader who constructs a rich 'situation model' but has a poorly formed 'text base' would MOST likely demonstrate which reading behavior?

Answer: Poor verbatim recall but successful application of text concepts to real-world scenarios

In Kintsch's CI model, the text base represents the propositional content derived closely from the words and sentences of the text (supporting verbatim/paraphrase recall), while the situation model integrates text content with prior knowledge into a rich mental representation useful for generalization and application. A reader with a weak text base but strong situation model builds robust real-world understanding from the gist and their schema, even while forgetting the surface form — evidenced by poor verbatim recall but successful transfer tasks.

A reading specialist notes that a student struggles specifically when reading expository science texts but performs adequately on narrative texts at the same Lexile level. The MOST evidence-based explanation for this pattern is:

Answer: The student lacks familiarity with compare-contrast, cause-effect, and problem-solution text structures common in expository writing

Research consistently shows that knowledge of expository text structures (description, sequence, compare-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution) is a critical and distinct component of comprehension for informational texts. Narrative texts follow story grammar that is more universally familiar and acquired earlier. Difficulty specifically with expository texts at the same Lexile — controlling for surface-level reading load — points to inadequate expository text-structure knowledge. Phonological processing is not genre-specific, and Lexile controls prevent attributing the gap solely to syntactic difficulty.

A CALT is selecting a reading comprehension intervention for an adolescent with a profile showing strong decoding, adequate vocabulary, but poor monitoring of understanding — specifically, the student does not notice when a passage contradicts itself. Which intervention component directly targets this deficit?

Answer: Reciprocal Teaching with an emphasis on self-questioning and clarifying

The deficit described — failure to detect internal contradictions — is a metacognitive comprehension-monitoring failure. Reciprocal Teaching (Palincsar & Brown, 1984) explicitly trains four strategies — predicting, questioning, clarifying, and summarizing — with 'clarifying' directly targeting the recognition and repair of comprehension breakdowns, including contradictions. Repeated reading addresses fluency; morpheme analysis targets vocabulary; story grammar maps support narrative structure, none of which address the metacognitive monitoring deficit described.