INTRAINDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN LEVELS OF LANGUAGE IN COMPREHENSION OF WRITTEN SENTENCES

An experiment requiring sentence acceptability judgments was administered to second, fourth, and sixth graders. Sentences contained only real words, one of which might be an orthographic foil differing from a real word by just one letter. Mode of sentence presentation was manipulated to focus the reader's attention on different levels of language-the single word or the sentence unit. Results were analyzed for both the group and individuals. Individual subject analyses showed that intraindividual differences in levels of written language occurred at all grade levels: 60% of the subjects had at least one dissociation between the word and sentence level. Some dissociations reflected temporary superiority of one level of language, while others reflected more stable superiority of one level of language at a particular time in reading development. A psychometric study provided converging evidence for dissociations between word and sentence level skills in reading. Although double dissociations occurred (word superior to sentence level and sentence superior to word level), dissociations in which word level skills were superior to sentence level skills were more common in first through sixth grades on the psychometric measures. Implications of intraindividual differences in levels of language for reading theory are discussed.