Processing of positive-causal and negative-causal coherence relations in primary school children and adults : a test of the cumulative cognitive complexity approach in German
- Establishing local coherence relations is central to text comprehension. Positive-causal coherence relations link a cause and its consequence, whereas negative-causal coherence relations add a contrastive meaning (negation) to the causal link. According to the cumulative cognitive complexity approach, negative-causal coherence relations are cognitively more complex than positive-causal ones. Therefore, they require greater cognitive effort during text comprehension and are acquired later in language development. The present cross-sectional study tested these predictions for German primary school children from Grades 1 to 4 and adults in reading and listening comprehension. Accuracy data in a semantic verification task support the predictions of the cumulative cognitive complexity approach. Negative-causal coherence relations are cognitively more demanding than positive-causal ones. Moreover, our findings indicate that children's comprehension of negative-causal coherence relations continues to develop throughout the course of primary school. Findings are discussed with respect to the generalizability of the cumulative cognitive complexity approach to German.
Author: | Julia KnoepkeORCiDGND, Tobias RichterORCiDGND, Maj-Britt Isberner, Johannes NaumannORCiDGND, Yvonne Neeb, Sabine Weinert |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-450533 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305000915000872 |
ISSN: | 1469-7602 |
ISSN: | 0305-0009 |
Pubmed Id: | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26846203 |
Parent Title (English): | Journal of child language |
Publisher: | Cambridge Univ. Press |
Place of publication: | London [u. a.] |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Date of Publication (online): | 2017/11/16 |
Year of first Publication: | 2016 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2017/11/16 |
Volume: | 44 |
Issue: | 2 |
Page Number: | 32 |
First Page: | 297 |
Last Page: | 328 |
Note: | © Cambridge University Press 2016. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
HeBIS-PPN: | 427963915 |
Institutes: | Erziehungswissenschaften / Erziehungswissenschaften |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 37 Bildung und Erziehung / 370 Bildung und Erziehung |
Sammlungen: | Universitätspublikationen |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |