Abstract
Fourth and sixth grade students grouped as good or poor readers were asked to read a story from a certain perspective or with instructions to read carefully. The ability to take a perspective, as measured by skill in differentiating important material on a highlighting task or in reproducing it on a later recall test, was present in both age groups. Reading skill was found to produce significant differences on both types of dependent measures. Further analysis indicated that reading ability differences in recall were related to, but could not be totally accounted for, by the ability to identify important material. A model is proposed claiming that poor readers are too overburdened by lower level reading skills to engage in this type of cognitive processing.