Are Adolescents with a Wider Vocabulary Faster at Inference Making During Reading? Evidence from Self-Paced Reading

This study investigates the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and inference-making during real-time reading comprehension in Spanish-speaking adolescents, addressing an important gap in the literature. A large sample of adolescents (n = 265) aged between 11 and 18 were asked to perform a self-paced reading task, which required integrating words across sentence boundaries. The study compared two conditions: repetition and inference. In the repetition condition, a critical word appeared in both context and target sentences, while in the inference condition, the context allowed the inference of the critical word. Vocabulary knowledge was assessed using a standardized receptive vocabulary test. The results showed that adolescents with larger vocabularies exhibited faster reading times across conditions, particularly in the inference condition, where a stronger vocabulary facilitated more efficient word-to-text integration. The interaction between vocabulary and reading condition indicated that a larger vocabulary mitigates the cognitive cost of inference-making, supporting more effective reading comprehension. These findings highlight the role of vocabulary knowledge in reducing the cognitive load associated with inference generation during reading, offering important implications for educational strategies aimed at improving adolescent literacy.