Connective Processing in Children with Poor Reading Comprehension: Focusing on Causal and Additive Connectives

Objectives: The present study investigated the processing of causal and additive connectives in children with poor reading comprehension through use of an online task. Methods: Twenty children in grades 3 to 5 participated in this study: 10 poor comprehenders and 10 normal readers. Sixty discourses of two sentences each were generated. The 60 discourses consisted of 20 discourses with and without causal connectives, 20 discourses with and without additive connectives, and 20 discourses for filler. All discourses were presented to the participants on a tablet computer. The participants were asked to read the two-sentence discourses that were either linked or not linked by a causal or additive connective. The participants' performance was measured based on reading time for each of the second sentences read. Results: Poor comprehenders read sentence more slowly than normal children in all discourses. In causal discourses, poor comprehenders showed no significant difference in reading time in the presence of causal connective discourses compared with the absence of causal connectives, in contrast with the results of the normal readers. Both groups showed no significant difference when reading with and without an additive connective. Conclusion: These findings indicate that poor comprehenders differ from normal readers' levels of performance in connective processing. In addition, different kinds of connectives did not have the same level of effect on reading speed.