Léxico, inferência e compreensão : percursos cognitivos na leitura de alunos do 8º e 9º ano do ensino fundamental.

Abstract

Anchored in the assumptions of Psycholinguistics, this research aimed to analyze the role of lexical quality in the formation of inferences during reading and the resolution of reading comprehension tasks by 8th and 9th-grade students from two schools in the countryside of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The study involved three 8th-grade and four 9th-grade groups, which were compared according to. according to school year and type of institution (public and private). The theoretical foundation was based on the studies of Dehaene (2012) and Villa & Silvestre (2014) on the mental lexicon; Fauconnier (1997) and Fauconnier & Turner (2002) on semantic fields and frames; Perfetti (2007) and Perfetti & Stafura (2013) on the Lexical Quality Hypothesis; and Kintsch & Van Dijk (1978, 1983), Dell’Isola (2001), Marcuschi (2008), and Oakhill, Cain & Elbro (2017) on reading comprehension and inference generation. Four data collection tests were developed: a participant profile (based on Finger-Kratochvil, 2012), a Cloze Test, a mind map task, and a questionnaire with multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Data was collected in the second half of 2023. Results suggested that students from the private school read more frequently, generate more inferences, and engage a greater number of linguistic elements from a single stimulus (type), compared to those from the public school. The findings of this research are consistent with national and international assessments (e.g., SAEB, PISA) regarding reading proficiency in public basic education: students engage minimally with reading, and what they read does not meet the threshold required to achieve the text comprehension. In the comparison between grades, students in the 9th year demonstrated greater proficiency in reading and inferencing strategies, suggesting that schooling and exposure to texts are determining factors in reading development. Finally, with the purpose of supporting the enhancement of teaching practices, this study offers strategies for fostering reading development across all levels of basic education.