Correlation Between Objective Comprehension Test Scores and Self-Reported Reading Comprehension

What the evidence says

The core empirical question — whether people's self-rated understanding of a text tracks their actual, tested comprehension of it — has direct measurement in one study. Tănase (2026) reports a moderate positive correlation between self-perceived comprehension and objective comprehension score (ρ = 0.35, p < 0.001): people who rated their own comprehension higher tended to score higher on the objective test. In a multiple linear regression controlling for other factors, self-perceived comprehension level remained an independent predictor of the objective score (β = 0.381, p < 0.001), so the association was not simply an artifact of some other variable moving both measures together.

That same study, however, found no measured correlation when the self-report was narrowed to a specific sub-skill: self-reported understanding of medical terminology showed essentially no relationship to the objective comprehension score (ρ = 0.062, p = 0.305). The two self-report measures came from the same sample and the same instrument, so the difference in outcome sits on the specificity of what respondents were asked to judge — general comprehension versus a narrow domain-specific skill — rather than on a difference in study design.

Two older cross-sectional theses (Whiteway 1995; Byrne 1993), both from grade-five student samples at Memorial University, report relationships in the same general territory: reading self-concept associated with reading comprehension scores, and reading comprehension skill correlated with self-perception as a reader, each flagged at conventional statistical thresholds. Neither source reports an effect size or correlation coefficient, so the strength of these associations cannot be compared to the ρ = 0.35 figure from Tănase, only their direction.

Byrne (1993) additionally reports that reading comprehension skill correlated with reading attitude, a construct distinct from self-perceived comprehension level. As with the self-perception finding from the same source, no magnitude is given.

Across all five claims, every measured relationship is associational — none of the sources report a mechanism by which self-perception and objective comprehension come to move together (for example, whether accurate self-monitoring improves comprehension, or whether stronger comprehension produces more accurate self-assessment). No claim here establishes causal direction.

Where the evidence splits

Within the Tănase (2026) study, general self-perceived comprehension correlates with objective comprehension score (ρ = 0.35, p < 0.001) while self-reported understanding of medical terminology specifically does not (ρ = 0.062, p = 0.305). The claims attribute this to a difference in what was measured: an overall self-rating of comprehension versus a self-rating of understanding for a specific term category. The sources do not say why a general self-rating would track performance while a narrower, domain-specific self-rating would not.

Thresholds and dose-response

No threshold established in the current sources.

Open empirical questions

• What explains the gap between the ρ = 0.35 association for general self-perceived comprehension and the null (ρ = 0.062) association for self-reported understanding of medical terminology within the same sample?
• Whether the correlation between self-perceived and objective comprehension holds, strengthens, or weakens across age groups or populations beyond grade-five students and the healthcare-context sample in Tănase (2026) is not measured here.
• No source reports whether self-perception tends to overestimate or underestimate actual comprehension when the two diverge.
• No source establishes whether accurate self-perception causes better comprehension, better comprehension causes more accurate self-perception, or a third factor produces both.