Understanding the Fourth-Grade Slump: Comprehension Difficulties as a Function of Reader Aptitudes and Text Genre

Our goal in this project is to develop a better understanding of young readers’ difficulties in comprehending text, and how those difficulties vary as a function of reader aptitudes and text genre. Therefore, we examined the effects of reading decoding abilities and world knowledge (assessed using the Woodcock–Johnson III Tests of Achievement) on 61 third-grade readers’ comprehension of narrative and expository texts. The children read a narrative (445 words) and an expository (464 words) text. Comprehension of each text was assessed with 12 multiple-choice questions. Comprehension of the narrative text improved as a function of decoding ability. In contrast, expository text comprehension was driven by world knowledge. The latter result indicates that the low-knowledge children were not able to make the knowledge-based inferences required by the expository text, replicating previous work conducted with adult populations (e.g., McNamara, 2001). Potential solutions such as increased text cohesion and reading strategy instruction will be discussed. The results of this study highlight the importance of text genre and reader knowledge when examining reading comprehension abilities.