ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a critical period in school children's literacy development, a period where they shift from "learning to read" to "reading to learn". It revolves around school children's oral language, provides an overview of developmental research showing that with schooling, children's understanding of the logical implications of conjunctions continues to grow; cognitive factors associated with this growth are also discussed. The chapter describes a study concerned with how the conclusions we draw about children's comprehension of logical relations might differ as a function of content familiarity and reading level. Studies concerned with reading comprehension indicate that skilled readers can infer logical relations such as cause-effect, contrast, additivity, and conditionality even when they are not made explicit in the text. There was a significant interaction of reading level by familiarity, and a triple interaction of grade by reading level by logical relationship. The chapter provides a discussion of some theoretical and applied implications of the body of research addressed.
