Project KaKoTex
Causal connectives: forms and their function for text comprehension
The project KaKoTex investigates how grammatical features of texts and individual characteristics of the readers (e.g. multilingualism) affect text comprehension in 4th grade. The focus is on the comprehension of linguistic means for marking cause-consequence relationships, so-called causal connectives (e.g. because, therefore). The project aims to find out (i) whether explicit marking of causal relations facilitates text comprehension, (ii) for which causal connectors this holds, and (iii) which students benefit from it.
The project KaKoTex investigates the comprehension of cause-consequence relationships and their linguistic realization in texts via causal connectives (e.g., because). According to educational standards, are expected to be able to extract explicit textual information or information that can be obtained by simple inferencing. In doing so, they should also pay attention to linguistic means indicating relations between different parts of the text, such as connectives. While connectives mark relationships between states of affairs (e.g., causality), they are neither necessary nor sufficient for establishing text coherence. Additionally, causal relationships can be expressed using different connectives, such as because, since, and therefore. Although initial empirical findings suggest that causal connectives facilitate text comprehension, it is still open which individual reader characteristics (e.g., multilingualism, reading skills, working memory) mediate this positive effect and whether this positive effect can be observed with all explicit markers of causal relationships or if there are differences across connectives and their grammatical characteristics. The project KaKoTex addresses these questions with studies on text comprehension and by using eye movement and reaction time measurements with fourth-grade students.
Funding
