The influence of the level of development of mental operations on reading comprehension in primary school students

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study examining the relationship between the quality of reading comprehension and the level of development of mental operations. The study involved 214 primary school students from a school in Moscow. Of these, the first group included 182 fourth-graders following a standard four-year primary school program, and the second (control) group included 32 students within the Effective Primary School project, covering the primary school program in three years. The methods included reading skill tests by L. A. Yasyukova, tests of independent thinking and logical memory, and tests by L. F. Tikhomirova and A. V. Basov assessing basic mental operations at the verbal level (classification, simple analogies, identifying essential features). The test results were correlated using statistical methods, demonstrating statistically significant correlations for a number of indicators. Reading skills in the control group were significantly higher compared to the main group. The indicators of reading skill level and the level of development of mental operations were found to be interrelated, except for the indicator of logical memory development. The study showed that students need to achieve a high level (over 70%) of formation of mental operations to comprehend the text effectively. In contrast to the main group, in the control group the development of such mental operations as classification (exclusion of an odd concept) and simple analogies (analysis of relationships between concepts), as well as independent thinking, corresponded to the established level. The skill of identifying essential features of concepts was the least developed in both groups. It was found that the level of development of skills in identifying essential features among primary school graduates in both groups did not reach the required level, which most positively contributes to students’ text comprehension. It is necessary to carry out psycho-pedagogical intervention to develop the skill of identifying essential conceptual features in primary school. Based on the findings, recommendations were proposed for the development of the skill of mental operations in primary school students.