Reading comprehension and perceived comprehensibility of lexical density at discourse and sentence level

A text was varied in three levels with regard to lexical density (LD=the qouta lexical words/total amounts of words in a sentence). One hundred and thirty-two subjects comprehension of text (discourse comprehension) was tested by a knowledge test and by subjective ratings. From the same text were also sampled 10 sentences of which each varied in the same density levels and were judged in the same comprehension scale as the whole text (sentence comprehension). The discourse analysis gave no differential effects of comprehension defined via knowledge tests and ratings. The single-sentence analysis gave significant contrasts between different LD-levels for 7 of 10 sentences. In a factorial analysis a significant interaction effect between LD and sentence was obtained. The discrepancy between discourse comprehension and sentence comprehension was interpreted so that the subjects in the latter case were oriented towards non-lexical factors, one of the reasons beeing lack of context. Implications for reading research are finally discussed.)digitalisering@umu.s