Comprehension Development among Young Children from the Variety Theoretical Perspective

This paper reviews how young children’s comprehension develops from an integrated theoretical perspective. Focusing on children aged three to six, it defines comprehension primarily as oral-language and narrative meaning-making, while recognising contributions from visual, social, and experiential cues. The review examines five complementary perspectives: Piagetian constructivism, language-acquisition theory, sociocultural theory, schema theory, and information-processing theory. Constructivism explains how children actively construct and reorganise meaning through assimilation, accommodation, exploration, and experience. Language-acquisition accounts clarify the foundational roles of vocabulary, grammar, linguistic input, reinforcement, innate capacities, and interaction. Sociocultural theory locates comprehension in socially mediated activity, emphasising language as a cultural tool, the zone of proximal development, and adjustable scaffolding. Schema theory explains how prior knowledge supports interpretation and inference, whereas information-processing theory identifies attention, working memory, encoding, retrieval, and cognitive load as constraints on comprehension. The review argues that these perspectives are complementary rather than competing: in shared reading, for example, activation of prior knowledge can reduce processing demands, while adult dialogue calibrates language and support to children’s developing capacities. No single theory sufficiently explains developmental variation across children, contexts, and cultures. Accordingly, effective early-childhood instruction should integrate rich language exposure, dialogic reading, guided retelling, play-based exploration, multimodal materials, manageable task demands, and culturally responsive differentiation. Such integration should preserve children’s agency while providing systematic, contingent support. The paper concludes that theory-informed, child-centred practice can strengthen young children’s comprehension and create foundations for later literacy, learning, communication, and social participation across diverse settings. It also identifies limits in each account and calls for flexible classroom adaptation carefully.