THE EFFECTS OF AN EMPATHY-BUILDING STRATEGY ON 6TH-GRADERS CAUSAL INFERENCING IN NARRATIVE TEXT COMPREHENSION

Sixth graders were randomly assigned to either (a) an empathy-building strategy condition in which they were instructed to take characters' perspectives and to imagine and express via oral reading how characters feel or (b) a no particular strategy condition in which they were instructed merely to read orally. The major findings indicated that the empathy-building strategy facilitated 6th graders' causal inferential comprehension of text information that contained a relatively large number of (a) causal connections in the story, (b) event clauses on the main causal chain running throughout the story, and (c) successful/unsuccessful event outcomes. The empathy-building strategy also enhanced poor comprehenders' literal understanding of text premises that were necessary for making causal inferences as long as those premises contained a relatively large number of (a) causal connections, (b) clauses on the main causal chain, and (c) successful/unsuccessful outcomes. The findings are discussed in the context of a tentative model which emphasizes the relationships among text structure variables, empathizing with story characters, and causal reasoning. © 1993.