ENCODING OF INSTRUMENTS WHEN 10-YEAR-OLDS TO 14-YEAR-OLDS PROCESS ISOLATED INSTRUMENT-IMPLICIT SENTENCES - MORE EVIDENCE OF IMPROVED ENCODING DURING CHILDHOOD RESULTING FROM ELABORATIVE INSTRUCTIONS

This study examined whether 10- to 14-year-olds infer implied instrume nts when reading isolated instrument-implicit sentences (IIS; e.g., He r friend swept the floor) as certainly and completely as they do when instructed to generate instruments in response to IIS. On-line instrum ental encoding was tested with a procedure that was based on recogniti on priming of instrument words given some of the letters from the word s (i.e., a word fragment). When children read the IIS without instruct ion to infer the implied instruments, the instrument fragment completi on rates were low and less than when inference generation was required or instruments were stated during reading. Children's spontaneous ins trumental inferences are less certain than suggested in previous resea rch.