Influence of Topic Interest on Children's Reading Comprehension

Abstract

Previous research indicates that children comprehend more of high-than low-interest material when each child is given a mixture of both types of material. This effect could be due to a contrast effect whereby children selectively respond to the more appealing topics in their set of passages. In the present study fifth grade children each received either all high-interest cloze passages or all low-interest cloze passages but not both. Children's cloze responses were scored by the exact replacement method and by a method which included synonyms as correct. Results were that children comprehended more of high- than low-interest material, indicating that the interest effect is not dependent on a contrast phenomenon. Synonym production data indicated that high-achieving children generated more synonyms than low-achieving children and that boys produced more synonyms than girls. Thus, scoring synonyms as correct appears to have informational value.