A PSYCHOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF ORAL READING MISCUES INVOLVING PRONOUN-REFERENT STRUCTURES AMONG SELECTED SECOND, FOURTH, AND SIXTH GRADE CHILDREN.

Abstract

This study is a naturalistic exploration of the way elementary school children resolve anaphoric pronoun reference in their oral reading of complete narratives. The resolution of pronominal reference is of interest because of the possibility it offers to examine how readers construct a meaning for a text while they are reading it. Third-person pronouns offer interesting points to examine how readers deal with the referential structure of text. They play an important role in establishing the structure by virtue of their dependence on other text items for their interpretation. It was assumed that the way readers deal with pronouns would provide insight into the way they were constructing the referential structure of the text. Miscue analysis was selected as an appropriate technique to examine the in-process behavior of readers. The miscues involving third-person pronouns made by 88 readers from second, fourth, and sixth grade children were analyzed. The children at each grade level each read a complete story. A total of 1,037 miscues involving third-person anaphoric pronouns were noted for qualitative analysis. The analysis produced the following results. Miscues involving third-person anaphoric pronouns occurred proportionally less frequently than miscues involving other text items. This suggested that pronouns were more readily comprehended by the subjects of this study than other text items. The frequency of insertion and substitution of particular third-person pronouns was directly proportional to the frequency of the particular pronoun in the text. This suggested that the subjects were sensitive to the broad referential character of the text. Substitution miscues involving third-person anaphoric pronouns were restricted to a small set of grammatical items. This suggested that the subjects were sensitive to syntax as they processed pronouns. A number of atypical miscue patterns were identified at particular points in the texts. These atypical patterns provided the strongest evidence for the view that readers construct a cognitively interpreted text as they read. The correction of pronoun miscues suggested that when the subjects constructed a cognitively interpreted text they did so tentatively and were prepared to change this in the face of disconfirming evidence in the subsequent text.