Abstract

The experimental data reviewed here have shown two kinds of individual differences in reading comprehension. One source of the differences result from the efficiency of reading skill. Less skilled readers generally show slower reading time and poor comprehension than do skilled readers when encountered syntactic complexity. It is suggested that the concept of the total amount of activation gives a good account of the efficiency of reading skills. The other source of the differences might result from the sufficiency or deficiency of executive resources. Good readers are slower than poor readers when plausible and implausible sentences of the same syntactic structure are given within-subjects design. In addition, good readers are able to shift from the strategy of context dependent processing to the strategy of ordered processing in ambiguity resolution whereas poor readers rely heavily on exhaustive processing. It is suggested that the executive processor which decides what the cognitive system should do exhibits three major functions of monitoring, goal instantiation, and adaptive strategy choices.