Investigates conscious understanding during narrative comprehension as revealed through use of think-aloud methodology. Presents an analytical model of conscious understanding. Identifies three working memory operations in the protocols--operations which are functionally necessary to inferences in the protocols. Discusses data and current models…

Describes a recursive transition network model that analyzes and represents a story as a causal network of categorized clauses and labeled relations. Reports on two experiments using procedural criteria to identify inferences and the assumptions that inferences operate over distances in the text and are transitive, resulting in a network…

Determines the nature of time constraints under which readers generate superordinate goal inferences. Provides support for a global-coherence model of inference generation which argues for the importance of causal information in constructing a coherent text representation. (HB)

Investigates the hypothesis that one of the processes used in situation model development is an inferential process in which the reader employs knowledge to form expectations when predictive text opportunities arise. Suggests that predictions are available to the reader at an abstract level of representation. (HB)

Investigates how adult readers represent causal relations among events in a narrative, specifically by testing two models of text comprehension, the linear chain of text model versus the network model. Provides support for a network model of the representation of causal relations in narratives. (HB)

Examines the influence of language proficiency and comprehension skill on situation-model construction during narrative comprehension. Studies 12 college students who thought aloud reading French and English stories for comprehension and who performed a verb-clustering task after reading each text. Finds that the students generated more…