INTRAINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN LEVELS OF LANGUAGE IN COMPREHENSION OFWRITTEN SENTENCES

An experiment requiring sentence acceptability judgments was administe red to second, fourth, and sixth graders. Sentences contained only rea l words, one of which might be an orthographic foil differing from a r eal word by just one letter. Mode of sentence presentation was manipul ated to focus the reader's attention on different levels of language-t he single word or the sentence unit. Results were analyzed for both th e group and individuals. Individual subject analyses showed that intra individual differences in levels of written language occurred at all g rade levels: 60% of the subjects had at least one dissociation between the word and sentence level. Some dissociations reflected temporary s uperiority of one level of language, while others reflected more stabl e superiority of one level of language at a particular time in reading development. A psychometric study provided converging evidence for di ssociations between word and sentence level skills in reading. Althoug h double dissociations occurred (word superior to sentence level and s entence superior to word level), dissociations in which word level ski lls were superior to sentence level skills were more common in first t hrough sixth grades on the psychometric measures. Implications of intr aindividual differences in levels of language for reading theory are d iscussed.