ABSTRACT

This chapter details the nature of the responses to the text-internal questions. Questions that ask about text-internal relationships have expected responses that reflect inferential reasoning about the specifically questioned information. Connections may be formed between the narrative and aspects of knowledge that are external to it. A number of researchers have conducted theoretical analyses of the underlying logical relations between events in a behavioral episode. S. R. Goldman and C. K. Varnhagen offered some general predictions about comprehension and answers to why questions asked about the motivating states, goals, actions in the attempt, consequences and reactions to the consequence. The chapter examines two levels of children's understanding of the types of themes: a nonverbal and a verbal. The nonverbal level was operationalized as a similarity-based sorting task and the verbal level as an explanation of the sorts the child had constructed.