SKILLED AND LESS SKILLED COMPREHENDERS - FRENCH CHILDRENS PROCESSING OF ANAPHORIC DEVICES IN WRITTEN TEXTS

This experiment investigated the processing of anaphoric devices in Fr ench 9-year-old skilled and less skilled comprehenders, matched in dec oding and vocabulary skills. It was designed to study whether the diff erences observed between skilled and less skilled comprehenders could be attributed to a specific deficit in processing anaphors or to a mor e basic deficit. Children were asked to identify the antecedents of di fferent anaphors while reading two long stories. Processing complexity was manipulated by varying three properties of anaphors: type (person al pronoun or general noun), syntactic function (subject or object) an d distance in relation to antecedents (near or far). In both texts les s skilled comprehenders performed less well than skilled ones. Type an d syntactic function affected anaphor resolution: pronouns were more d ifficult to resolve than general nouns, objects more difficult than su bjects. In one text far antecedents were more difficult to find than n ear antecedents, but the opposite effect was observed in the other tex t. The interactions between comprehension skill and the three manipula ted factors suggest that a specific deficit in the processing of anaph ors contributes to the lower performance of less skilled comprehenders , who had particular difficulties with object pronouns. The analysis o f incorrect responses confirmed the weight of such specific difficulti es. In conclusion, the interdependence between a specific deficit in t he processing of anaphors and other deficits is discussed.