The Development of Verbal Efficiency, Metacognitive Strategies, and Their Interplay

This article explores the interplay between low-level reading subcomponents, metacognitive aspects of reading, and how this relation changes developmentally. First, theories relevant to the question of how subcomponent efficiencies, available resources, and metacognitive aspects of reading interrelate are reviewed. Second, research documenting increases in a reader's subcomponent efficiencies is briefly surveyed. Next, research revealing the child's developing metacognitive competencies is explored. To conclude, compensatory-encoding theory (Walczyk, 1993) is used to propose a model of the development of the interplay between resources, subcomponent efficiencies, and metacognitive aspects of reading. Diagnostic and intervention implications are considered.