The Role of Social Cognition in Reading Comprehension: A Developmental Perspective

This eye-tracking study investigates whether age-related changes in the ability to take perspective influence narrative text comprehension. Thirty-two typically-developing children (M = 11.73; SD = 0.74) and 34 young adults (M = 21.02; SD = 1.98) read stories in which the need to use perspective-taking abilities was systematically varied. The offline measure (after reading) suggested that adults were better and faster at making inferences in general, and both 10-12-year-olds and 18-25-year-olds were faster in making an inference in the complex perspective-taking condition (which required them to take the perspective of one of the story characters and imagine how this character would react to the intentions, thoughts, or feelings of another story character) compared to the control condition (which required them to make an inference about physical causality with regard to an object). The reading process itself revealed that 18-25-year-olds read stories faster across all conditions we...Show moreThis eye-tracking study investigates whether age-related changes in the ability to take perspective influence narrative text comprehension. Thirty-two typically-developing children (M = 11.73; SD = 0.74) and 34 young adults (M = 21.02; SD = 1.98) read stories in which the need to use perspective-taking abilities was systematically varied. The offline measure (after reading) suggested that adults were better and faster at making inferences in general, and both 10-12-year-olds and 18-25-year-olds were faster in making an inference in the complex perspective-taking condition (which required them to take the perspective of one of the story characters and imagine how this character would react to the intentions, thoughts, or feelings of another story character) compared to the control condition (which required them to make an inference about physical causality with regard to an object). The reading process itself revealed that 18-25-year-olds read stories faster across all conditions we examined. In addition, both 10-12-year-olds as well as adults revealed the longest reading times in the most difficult condition in which complex perspective-taking was needed to draw inferences. Stories in which the interaction between two story characters has to be taken into account are processed differently compared to stories in which no social-cognitive information is needed, as well as compared to when one only has to take the perspective of one story character. Narratives in which perspective-taking is crucial for comprehension are more difficult to process, even for adults, but are better represented in the situation model readers construct.Show less

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The Role of Social Cognition in Reading Comprehension: A Developmental Perspective