ABSTRACT
All of us know the frustration that builds when we find nonsequiturs in material we need to learn, when we discover mutually incompatible assumptions in a theory we are trying to comprehend, or when we spot inconsistent premises in an argument we are struggling to follow. It becomes obvious that something is wrong, either with the material itself, or with our own comprehension of it. Detection of problems such as these reflects an essential component of critical academic reasoning. In this chapter, I consider what processes are involved in the detection of such inconsistencies or nonsequiturs, and what the developmental course of such abilities might be. I speculate about how educators can promote children's ability to monitor their comprehension in this way. The general framework I rely on has been reported more fully in Markman (1981). Also because several recent papers have provided extensive, up-to-date summaries of the literature in comprehension monitoring (Baker & Brown, 1980; Flavell, 1981), I do not attempt to review the empirical studies in detail, except when they bear on the particular issues addressed in this chapter.
