Resumo

SOUSA, Lucilene Bender de  e  HUBNER, Lilian Cristine. Challenges on reading comprehension assessment: cognitive demands and text readability. Neuropsicologia Latinoamericana [online]. 2015, vol.7, n.1, pp. 34-46. ISSN 2075-9479.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5579/rnl.2013.0237.

This paper addresses major challenges on building tasks for reading comprehension assessment, reviewing two important aspects: the cognitive demands of tasks and text readability. This review reflects on the complexity involved in reading comprehension assessment, the cautions and criteria to be considered during task construction dealing with the two aspects discussed (cognitive demands and readability). In the first part, the article presents different kinds of tasks that assess the product of reading comprehension, highlighting their objectives and limitations. Then, it discusses some hidden cognitive processes that influence on the product of reading comprehension, such as word recognition, world knowledge, memories and verbal ability. In the second part, it focuses on quantitative and qualitative methods of text readability analysis, as well as on which factors should be taken into consideration when choosing a text to be part of a reading assessment task. Finally, it concludes that, despite the progresses in reading research in the last decades, reading comprehension assessment has not incorporated many advances. There is a lack of integrated studies able to promote the interface between reading research and research on reading comprehension assessment.

Palavras-chave : Reading; Comprehension; Cognition; Readability; Assessment.

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