Comprehension substantially benefits from attending to, thinking about, and mentally representing the sources of any presented information. Such processes require mental effort and unfortunately people do not always engage in such activities. The current article presents a nascent, evolving model of discourse comprehension that formalizes…

In this study, we investigated the degree to which the cognitive processes in which students engage during reading comprehension could be examined through dynamical analyses of their natural language responses to texts. High school students (n = 142) generated typed self-explanations while reading a science text. They then completed a…

Reading is a complex act mediated by cognitive and sociocultural constructs that include classroom discourse and personal epistemology. This study explored the epistemic beliefs underpinning the discourse of four third-grade, male struggling readers and sought to understand how these beliefs unfolded during the critical-analytic reading…

A study investigated the conditions and processes that stimulate questions in adults. During the experiment, the amount of effort required to assimilate a prose text was manipulated and the influence of this factor on the number of questions asked as well as on the capacity of retaining information was examined. This was done by activating…

A series of experimental and theoretical investigations of text inference were conducted. One applied a theory of inferable text cohesion to the devising of text structure revisions that assist comprehension and memory. Since only modest success was achieved, the next three projects went beyond text revision to the use of adjunct outlines,…

The notion that inferences contributing to coherence of a text representation are made during reading is examined. It is demonstrated that this idea is an overgeneralization and that one must distinguish between relations internal to the structure of the representation and relations that involve references to the world. (27 references) (Author/LB)

Inference is discussed as a factor in the derivation of non-explicit antecedents and referents for three types of discourse anaphora: definite pronouns, "one"-anaphora, and verb phrase ellipsis. This derivation process is seen as being part of the normal process of text-understanding. It is claimed that the use of non-explicit…

Describes a story grammar, summarizes some results of story grammar research, and suggests instructional procedures for developing children's concept of story and story components. (FL)

To conceptualize a reader's comprehension of text as a semantic and interpretive processing of information, it is necessary to take note of interactions among persons and texts and conditions under which the texts are to be comprehended. A Computer-Assisted Language Analysis System (CALAS) was constructed which focuses on the text as any…

Demonstrates that (1) in a theory of comprehension, global coherence must refer not just to the availability of a macrostructure, but also to its ease of construction; and (2) the topic-comment assignment at the sentence level can be an important influence on the reader's perception of the passage topic. (FL)

This paper is intended to serve as an introduction to text analysis as a research tool and vehicle for improving instruction. In terms of perspective, two major theses are maintained throughout the paper: text analysis should be used within the context of understanding that a multiplicity of variables can influence reader/text interactions, and…

Presents an analysis of prose narratives that allows content to be identified as central and provides a priori rationale for why the content is central. Investigates which content is supportive of, or distracting to, the central content. (FL)

Discusses previous articles in this journal and calls for a new theory of story grammar. (FL)

The first part of this paper on prose analysis explains how structural analysis of text can be used in reading research. This explanation focuses on three methodological uses of prose analysis: (1) the identification of the content and organization of the text for use in a scoring system, (2) the measurement of variations between the text and the…

A study was conducted to find a manipulation that could be performed on a text (roughly analogous to real instructional material) which would lead readers to process that text more efficiently. One-hundred five college students were placed into either an experimental or a control group. Students in the control group were given an unchanged version…