Study of Inferential Ability in Primary School Children

Abstract

The inferential ability of typically developing second and third standard children has been explored in this study. There is a need to study about the inferential ability in reading of children as it would predict their comprehension abilities. This area has received very little attention in Indian context. This cross sectional study aimed to investigate the inferential ability of second and third standard participants, to find the differences in the performance between both the standards, between the gender and finally between good and poor readers. A total of 80 participants with 40 from second standard and the other 40 from third standard maintaining equal gender ratio were selected for the study. The participants were categorized as good and poor readers. The causal inferential ability was explored using developed reading passages where the participant had to select the target word as the appropriate option after reading the passage.

On statistical analysis, it was found that all the participants made some amount of inferences but no significant differences were found between the inferential ability of second and third standard participants and also between the genders. Although statistically there was no significant difference between standard wise performances but qualitatively differences was present. That is there was a steady increase in the performance of third standard participants. The percentage of high inferences increased for third standard indicating their inferential ability is improving.