Recall of thematically relevant material by adolescent good and poor readers as a function of written versus oral presentation.

Abstract

Good and poor readers drawn from seventh-grade classes read one prose passage and listened to a second one.They were tested, following each passage, for comprehension and recall of that passage.Under both reading and listening conditions, good readers recalled a greater proportion of the stories, and the likelihood of their recalling a particular unit was a clear function of the unit's structural importance; poor readers recalled less of the stories, and their recall protocols were not as clearly related to variations in structural importance.Performance following reading was significantly correlated (r = .85)with performance following listening.The results indicate that poor readers suffer from a general comprehension deficit, and that similar processes are involved in reading and listening comprehension.