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Investigating Differences in General Comprehension Skill

American Psychological Association
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition
Authors:
Morton Ann Gernsbacher at University of Wisconsin–Madison
Morton Ann Gernsbacher
Kathleen R. Varner
Kathleen R. Varner
Kathleen R. Varner
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Mark Faust at University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Mark Faust
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For adults, skill at comprehending written language correlates highly with skill at comprehending spoken language. Does this general comprehension skill extend beyond language-based modalities? And if it does, what cognitive processes and mechanisms differentiate individuals who are more versus less proficient in general comprehension skill? In our first experiment, we found that skill in comprehending written and auditory stories correlates highly with skill in comprehending nonverbal, picture stories. This finding supports the hypothesis that general comprehension skill extends beyond language. We also found support for the hypotheses that poorer access to recently comprehended information marks less proficient general comprehension skill (Experiment 2) because less skilled comprehenders develop too many mental substructures during comprehension (Experiment 3), perhaps because they inefficiently suppress irrelevant information (Experiment 4). Thus, the cognitive processes and mechanisms involved in capturing and representing the structure of comprehensible information provide one source of individual differences in general comprehension skill.
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... The MMCB contains written, auditory, and pictorial components. Gernsbacher, Varner, and Faust (1990) reported that the measures from different media were highly correlated (.72-.92), and a factor analysis showed that there was one main factor extracted from the scores. However, R. H. Maki, Jonas, and Kallod (1994) found that the written and the auditory components were correlated (r ϭ .63), ...
... Each participant was shown into a small experimental cubical containing a computer. The materials and procedures were identical to those used by Gernsbacher et al. (1990). The stories were children's stories modified by Gernsbacher and Varner (1988) for use in the MMCB. ...
... We scored the MMCB using the criteria developed by Gernsbacher and Varner (1988). Gernsbacher et al. (1990) had reported that their scoring procedure for the MMCB produced a high correlation of interjudge agreement (r ϭ .99). In our study, about one third of the participants' responses were scored independently by two scores. ...
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