On teaching inference as a comprehension strategy

This is a little long, but gets to some important insights into inferences and how to teach comprehension:

Consider the following short section of a story:

Janet's dog Brutus slammed into the table in his enthusiasm. Later she surveyed the broken shards of her rare vase.

There are many inferences that could be made when reading this passage. First, inferences connect anaphors to their referents. Anaphors are those terms that refer to a character or object in a new way. For example, in the first sentence, readers infer that Brutus is the enthusiastic male referred to by the pronoun ‘his'.

A second category of inferences that are important to make while reading are those that are logically required for maintaining causal coherence; that is, establishing the causal relations among events.In this short passage, readers must infer that the vase was on the table that was bumped, and that the vase was caused to fall and subsequently break when the table moved.

Third, there are a number of likely inferences whose generation would be subject to individual differences. For instance, many readers would infer that the shards were located on the floor, but they could just as easily be thought of as being on the table.

Finally, there are many inferences that could add to the richness of a reader's understanding of the passage, which would not be related to maintaining coherence. For example, a reader could infer that Janet was upset or that Brutus would now be spending more time outdoors

Thurlow, R., & van den Broek, P.(1997). Automaticity and Inference Generation During Reading Comprehension, Reading & Writing Quarterly 13 (2) p.165-181.

So what does research say about these four types of inference?

These four classes of potential inferences can be broken into two distinct categories (Long, Seely, Oppy, & Golding, 1996; McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992; Vonk & Noordman, 1990). The first two, anaphoric and causal, are inferences that are required for maintaining coherence. The others, likely and enriching, are inferences that elaborate on the meaning of the text.

…the inferences described earlier as required for coherence are made automatically during the reading process, at least by more skilled readers. Research into the inferences we described as elaborative shows weaker and sometimes contradictory evidence as to whether they occur during reading.

In light of such studies, researchers are coming closer to agreeing on a "minimalist" view regarding which inferences are made automatically during reading (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992). In this view, only those inferences that are required to maintain coherence are seen as being automatic.

Thurlow, R., & van den Broek, P.(1997). Automaticity and Inference Generation During Reading Comprehension, Reading & Writing Quarterly 13 (2) p.165-181.

And that leads to two specific instructional recommendations for teaching inference as a comprehension strategy:

First, it is apparent that skilled readers do have a goal of constructing a coherent memory representation. They make, at least, a minimum number of automatic inferences that help integrate new material with the previous text. If integration is difficult, they will take time to work out the difficulty with elaborations. A recommendation for reading instruction is to make sure developing readers are aware that the pieces of a text are meant to go together and that they, the readers, have a task to find out how the pieces fit.

Second, skilled readers have strategies and criteria for repairing coherence breaks. They re-read difficult passages; they look back in the text for more information; they even make up their own explanations that make sense. These are all teachable skills…

Thurlow, R., & van den Broek, P.(1997). Automaticity and Inference Generation During Reading Comprehension, Reading & Writing Quarterly 13 (2) p.165-181.

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