Anchoring your bridge: the importance of paraphrasing to inference making in self-explanations

Analyzing constructed responses, such as think-alouds or self-explanations, can reveal valuable information about readers’ comprehension strategies. The current study expands on the extant work by (1) investigating combinations and patterns of comprehension strategies that readers use and (2) examining the extent to which these patterns relate to individual differences and comprehension outcomes. We leveraged archival data from three datasets (n = 472) to examine how comprehension strategy use varied across datasets, texts, and populations (high school, undergraduate). Students’ self-explanations were coded for strategy use and then further analyzed in terms of combinations and patterns of strategies. Our analyses revealed that almost all readers primarily engaged in paraphrasing and/or the combination of paraphrasing and bridging, with few instances of elaboration. Further, the combination of paraphrasing and bridging was the best predictor of performance on a comprehension test. In terms of patterns, switching between strategies was not correlated to reading comprehension and was negatively correlated with the combination of paraphrasing and bridging. Understanding which strategy combinations and patterns are optimal can be used to inform adaptive instruction and feedback that can aid in more individualized support for readers.