Verbal Analogical Reasoning Skills in Poor Comprehenders

Jeong, Miran

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Commun Sci Disord. 2009;14(3): 275-287.

Miran Jeong^`

정미란(Miran Jeong)

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives
In the present study, we investigated the verbal analogical reasoning skills of poor comprehenders. Relative to their peers, these poor comprehenders had word decoding skills within the normal range with delayed reading comprehension skills.
Methods
Eighty elementary school children in grades 3～6 participated in this study. Among them, 40 were poor comprehenders and 40 were normally developing children. All participants were tested using a verbal analogy task containing five types of verbal analogies: synonyms, antonyms, linear order, category, and functional relationships. For each analogy type, ten items were generated; the total number of items was 50. To assess the developing changes in verbal analogy skills, the children were divided into two groups based on age: third and fourth graders in the younger group and fifth and sixth graders in the older group. We conducted a three-way analysis of variance of participant group (2) × grade (2) × analogy type(5), where the analogy type was a repeated measure.
Results
Significant main effects were found for group, age and analogy type. The three-way interaction among group, grade and analogy type was also statistically significant. The normal children exhibited statistically significant differences between the two grade groups in all analogy types except for functional relationships, whereas the poor comprehenders showed significant differences between the two grade groups in antonyms, linear order and functional relationships.
Discussion & Conclusion
The poor comprehenders’ performances on the analogical reasoning task were interpreted in terms of their vocabulary skills. Implications for interventions were also discussed.

Keywords: 읽기이해부진 | 단어 유추 | 어휘 poor comprehension | verbal analogy | vocabulary