WHEN IS A GUESS A GUESS - CHILDRENS SENSITIVITY TO INFERENCE CONSTRAINT IN ASSESSING UNDERSTANDING OF STORY INFORMATION

Four experiments determined if second and fourth grade children and college students are sensitive to inference constraint both in making causal inferences and in assessing understanding of a story. Inference constraint reflected the interaction of encoding and retrieval variables. The encoding variable concerned clues that referenced a critical concept used in the inference. Retrieval varied in the number of inferences that were probed, the response options, and the instructions about guessing. Feelings of understanding were assessed after, during, and before the question process in Experiments 1 through 3. Experiment 4 concerned the relation between understanding monitoring and text monitoring. The results were that both inference likelihood and understanding ratings varied with constraint for all grades. The novel developmental findings included the surprising competence of second graders in assessing understanding, marked differences with grade in dealing with uncertainty, and contrasting patterns of performance for the children in evaluating understanding and story adequacy. The results suggest that comprehension monitoring and text monitoring should be distinguished empirically and theoretically. © 1991.