Comprehension of sentences and texts with high-cost structures in schoolchildren.

Difficulties in reading comprehension have impacted the learning of many schoolchildren. Bishop (2001) reports that children with early language problems, such as Developmental Language Disorder (DLD), are at a higher risk of becoming less proficient readers. Correa (2022) highlights the difficulties these children face in comprehending costly sentences. This research aims to: (1) analyze the demands placed on the reader when processing costly sentences, (2) identify students with possible DLD, (3) provide resources to improve language comprehension. The research, currently in progress, consists of three distinct tasks, in which costly sentences will be presented in different ways: oral comprehension of isolated sentences, oral comprehension of sentences within a context, and reading comprehension of a narrative text, in which reading, retelling, and answering a questionnaire are analyzed. The first tasks use an instrument developed by the Laboratory of Psycholinguistics and Language Acquisition (LAPAL), which evaluates linguistic comprehension of costly sentences through image identification. The first stage was conducted with 34 students, aged 8 to 9. This age and school grade were selected because they mark the end of the literacy acquisition process, a period when reading comprehension difficulties commonly begin to emerge. This stage identified that 30% of the students had difficulties understanding linguistic statements formulated with costly sentences. The next stages involve assessing the oral comprehension in context among students who struggled with Task 1 and evaluating the reading comprehension of a complex text in all participants. It is expected that the results of Task 2 will show improvement, while Task 3 will confirm the difficulties identified in Task 1. If the second stage yields positive results, the material could be used as an intervention strategy to support clinical and pedagogical practices in developing children`s reading skills.

References:
Bishop, D. V. M. Uncommon understanding: development and disorders of language comprehension in children. Hove, UK: Psychology Press, 2001.

Correa, L. M. S.; Augusto, M. R. A.; Bagetti, T. An intervention procedure in the processing of high-cost structures. In: Freitas, Maria João; Lousada, Marisa; Alves, Dina Caetano. (Eds.). Clinical Linguistics: Models, Assessment, and Intervention. 1st ed. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2022.