Development of inferential thinking skills and reading comprehension in children aged between three to six years

This research, made within the "Cognition and Language in Childhood" research group, described inferential thinking and reading comprehension abilities and their relationship in preschool and kindergarten children. Two task groups were designed to identify abilities in both areas, as their relationship with gender, age, and socioeconomic level in 120 children from three to six years old who belonged to different preschool levels. It was found that inferential thinking abilities and reading comprehension abilities have differences among ages and socioeconomic levels, showing better child performances in complementary inference and in the ability to relate text with its context. There is a direct positive correlation between inferential thinking and reading comprehension, reflected strongly in the correlation between complementary inferences and linguistic knowledge.