Establishing coherence using connectives: A developmental overview

PurposeCoherence markers are important cues for readers to see how sentences are related. We present a developmental overview: are connectives (because, but), cue phrases (as a result), and signalling phrases (the reason for this is…) beneficial to readers of all ages, and which role do they play in text processing?MethodWe review evidence from experimental studies on the role of coherence markers in reading comprehension, addressing off-line and on-line results from children, adolescents, and adults.ResultsChildren show a gradual increase in their ability to benefit from connectives in texts (Cain & Nash 2011; Irwin and Pulver 1984; Yuill & Oakhill 1991). Even children in grade 4 benefit from explicit instruction on how to combine sentences with coherence markers (Williams et al. 2014). For adolescents, the addition of connectives leads to better answers to bridging inference questions about History, Economy and Biology texts, and narratives (Land et al. 2007; van Silfhout et al. 2014, 2015). For adults the presence of coherence markers results in better and faster recall (Lorch & Lorch 1986; Millis & Just 1994), faster response on verification tasks (Sanders & Noordman 2000), and higher scores on comprehension tasks (Degand & Sanders 2002; Kamalski et al. 2008; McNamara et al. 1996).Processing results indicate that coherence markers serve as processing instructions: by providing information on the type of relation to be established, thereby restricting the number of inferences that can be made (Millis et al. 1993; Koornneef & Sanders 2013), they allow the reader to process upcoming information more quickly (Millis & Just 1994; van Silfhout et al. 2014, 2015).ConclusionsWe will address implications for education.