Estudo da movimentação ocular de alunos do 9º ano do ensino fundamental durante a leitura de sentenças coordenadas sindéticas adversativas e subordinadas adverbiais concessivas

Abstract

Investigates if the cost of the processing of coordinate clauses is higher than the cost of the processing of subordinate clauses in a group of 9th grade students. In Engelkamp and Rummer (2002) and Rummer, Engelkamp and Konieczny (2003), it was observed that the processing of subordinate clauses is less costly than the coordinate ones in tasks of memorization, as suggested that the displacement of the subordinate clause influences the costs of the processing. Such results were confronted with the exercise of teaching subordinate conjunctions to 9th graders, which ended up with the proposal of this research. The expectation is that the students would have more difficulties in reading subordinate clauses due to the lack of knowledge of the logical relation served by the conjunction. Given the variability of the logical relations and the lack of time for the execution of this research, we could investigate only the relations of opposition and concession. To do so, three experiments of eye tracking were developed: (i) the first one investigated the cost of reading processing of subordinate clause displacement; (ii) the second one compared the reading process of coordinate and subordinate clauses; (iii) and the third one observed the importance of four different conjunctions in coordinate clauses. Twenty-four experimental items, made up of conditions, were created, which contemplated, all together, the three experiments listed above: four subordinate clauses, two without and two with displacement, which used the conjunctions “embora” (although) and “ainda que” (even if); four coordinate clauses, which used the conjunctions “entretanto” (however), “mas” (but), “no entanto” (yet) and “e” (and). A question of control of attention followed all clauses. Forty-two 9th graders and forty proficient adult readers participated in the experiment. The observed measurements were the total time of reading of the complete clauses, and the time of the first reading in the complete sentence/clause. For experiment one (subordinate displacement), measuring the first reading, an interaction between group and displacement was found (F=4,06, p = 0.04), besides the main effect for displacement (p<0.001), but group effect was not observed. For total time measurement, only main group effect was found (p<0.001). For the study of the processing of the coordinate and subordinate clauses (experiment two), main group effects were found for the first reading and the total reading time (p=0.04 e p<0.001). In the study of coordinate conjunctions, we observed an important difference for each conjunction in the first reading (p=0.006), but not in the total time of reading. There was significant difference in the total time of reading for the group (p<0.001). The results suggest that the group of students read in a different way and more slowly than the adult group, but this measurement is nor sensitive to coordinate and subordinate clauses. However, the displacement of the subordinate clause to the front position of the sentence generates a higher cost of processing for the students, suggesting that the school learning of this topic is relevant for the coating of the information in the subordinate clause. For the study of the conjunctions, it was observed that the first reading is sensitive to the length of the conjunction, because the conjunction “e” (and) has a time of processing faster in the total time of the reading, which is quite different from the conjunction “mas” (but), which shows clear adversative relationship given its frequency of use.