Psychology

Productive extension of semantic memory in school-aged children: Relations with reading comprehension and deployment of cognitive resources

Document Type

Article

Abstract

We investigated 7- to 10-year-old children's productive extension of semantic memory through selfgeneration of new factual knowledge derived through integration of separate yet related facts learned through instruction or through reading. In Experiment 1, an experimenter read the to-be-integrated facts. Children successfully learned and integrated the information and used it to further extend their semantic knowledge, as evidenced by high levels of correct responses in open-ended and forced-choice testing. In Experiment 2, on half of the trials, the to-be-integrated facts were read by an experimenter (as in Experiment 1) and on half of the trials, children read the facts themselves. Self-generation performance was high in both conditions (experimenter- and self-read); in both conditions, self-generation of new semantic knowledge was related to an independent measure of children's reading comprehension. In Experiment 3, the way children deployed cognitive resources during reading was predictive of their subsequent recall of newly learned information derived through integration. These findings indicate self-generation of new semantic knowledge through integration in school-age children as well as relations between this productive means of extension of semantic memory and cognitive processes engaged during reading.

Publication Title

Developmental Psychology

Publication Date

7-1-2016

Volume

52

Issue

7

First Page

1024

Last Page

1037

ISSN

0012-1649

DOI

10.1037/dev0000130

Keywords

knowledge extension, reading comprehension, self-generation, semantic integration, semantic memory

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