The coherence threshold marks the point at which a reader has gained a sufficient comprehension level to move on in a text. Previous research has demonstrated that the readers' coherence threshold can be manipulated by increasing or decreasing task demands. The present experiments examined a manipulation of the coherence threshold within the text…

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…

This article argues that a clear division between two sources of information--one oriented to world knowledge, the other to linguistic semantics--offers a framework within which mechanisms for modelling the highly flexible relation between language and interpretation necessary for natural discourse can be specified and empirically validated.…

Research on cognitive modeling of information search and Web navigation emphasizes the importance of "information scent" (the relevance of semantic cues such as link labels and headings to a reader's goal; Pirolli & Card, 1999). This article shows that not only semantic but also structural knowledge is involved in navigating the Web…

A computational framework is presented for the generation of elementary speech acts to establish conceptual alignment between a computer system and its user. This article clearly distinguishes between 2 phases of the alignment process: message interpretation and message generation. In the interpretation phase, presuppositions are extracted from…