Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Readability is often conceived in terms of processing efficiency, assuming that texts that are easier to process are also more effective communicatively. However, lexical choices may support different aspects of textual quality. This study investigates how concreteness and specificity shape children's subjective evaluations of textual quality, focusing on perceived clarity and informativeness. Children aged 9–12 read short texts manipulated for concreteness and specificity and rated them on four dimensions: ease of understanding, confusion, quantity of information, and relevance of information. Mixed-effects analyses reveal that concreteness increases perceived clarity across age groups, whereas specificity primarily tends to enhance perceived informativeness, with effects varying across development. These findings suggest that different lexical properties contribute in distinct ways to clarity and informativeness, and that their relationship is not fully captured by processing ease alone. Overall, the results support a multidimensional view of communicative efficiency and highlight developmental changes in how children evaluate informational content.