Studies investigating the effect of connectives on comprehension have yielded different results, most likely because of differences in methodology and limited samples of texts and readers. We added and removed causal, temporal, contrastive, and additive connectives in 20 authentic Dutch texts. Dutch adolescents (n = 794) differing in reading…

To build a coherent accurate mental representation of a text, readers routinely validate information they read against the preceding text and their background knowledge. It is clear that both sources affect processing, but "when" and "how" they exert their influence remains unclear. To examine the time course and cognitive…

Previous research showed an emerging appreciation of literary narratives on second reading, whereas such effects fail to occur for the same narratives depleted of literary features. This might suggest that appreciation is associated with readers' acknowledgment of the purposefulness of literary devices on rereading. It may also be that the…

To create a coherent and correct mental representation of a text, readers must validate incoming information; they must monitor information for consistency with the preceding text and their background knowledge. The current study aims to contrast text- and knowledge-based monitoring to investigate their unique influences on processing and whether…

The issue addressed in this study is whether propositional integration and world-knowledge inference can be distinguished as separate processes during the comprehension of Dutch "omdat" (because) sentences. "Propositional integration" refers to the process by which the reader establishes the type of relation between two clauses…

This study examined the representation of knowledge in text writing in 20 ten-year-old children and 20 adults in the Netherlands. The research analyzed the use of clause linking devices to compose larger text units. Special attention was given to the use of causal relational markers and the extent to which causal relations within the texts matched…