Centre for Policy on Ageing



Logical inference skills in adult reading comprehension — effects of age and formal education
Author(s)	Bridget A Franks
Journal title	Educational Gerontology, vol 24, no 1, January-February 1998
Pages	pp 47-68
Keywords	Reasoning ; Cognitive processes ; Older people ; Adults ; Middle aged ; Educational status [elderly] ; Research.
Annotation	This study applied knowledge about inference-making from the deductive reasoning literature to drawing specific inferences from prose passages. It explored the effects of age, inference form, prior knowledge and formal education on inferential comprehension skills in adult readers. Subjects were college-aged, middle aged and older adults with some college education and older adults with no college education. All subjects read three prose passages, each containing six inferential questions based on premises expressed in the passages. Findings showed that among college-educated adults, no effects for age were observed, but college-educated adults in the older age group performed significantly better than those without such education. Although performance on this task did not improve beyond young adulthood, neither did it decline with age among college-educated adults.
Accession Number	CPA-980227404 A
Classmark	DC: DA: B: SD: SE: F:V: 3A
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.