After reading, "few of the juniors were accepted," focus is on the students not accepted, the complement set. According to the Presupposition Denial Account, negative quantifiers, such as "few," convey a denial of expectation, or shortfall, which leads to complement set focus. In six experiments, we explored the role of the…

We propose that machine-learned computational models (MLCMs), in which the model parameters and perhaps even structure are learned from data, can complement extant approaches to the study of text and discourse. Such models are particularly useful when theoretical understanding is insufficient, when the data are rife with nonlinearities and…

This study aims to establish whether the processing of different connectives (e.g., "and," "but") and different coherence relations (addition, contrast) can be modulated by a structural feature of the connected segments--namely, parallelism. While "but" is mainly used to contrast two expressions, "and"…

Little research has examined young children's reading preference by text type. We examined 37 children reading, evaluated their reading experience, and surveyed parents for at-home reading practices and parent predictions of their child's text preference. Framed by social learning theory using a multiple-case study research design, data analysis…

This article reports on a single case study investigating the adoption of reading portfolio and video-mediated reflection tasks so as to promote Indonesian university students' engagement in dialogic reading. Nested in a classroom ethnography design, data were collected through multiple interviews, teaching journals, and students'…

One of the major aims of discourse-processing literature is to understand whether and when readers form discourse-level representations online. To test this, two word-by-word, self-paced reading experiments investigated the time course of integrating incoming information about the protagonist into the unfolding discourse-level representation in…

In garden path (GP) jokes, a first dominant interpretation is detected as incoherent and subsequently substituted by a hidden joke interpretation. Two important factors for the processing of GP jokes are salience of the initial interpretation and accessibility of the hidden interpretation. Both factors are assumed to be affected by contextual…

To examine the relations between emergent readers' social interaction styles and their comprehension processes, we adapted sociocultural and transactional views of learning and reading, and conducted statistical discourse analysis of 1,359 conversation turns transcribed from 14 preschoolers' 40 buddy reading events. Results show that interaction…

Eye tracking was used to explore the role of grammatical aspect and world knowledge in establishing temporal relationships across sentences in discourse. Younger and older adult participants read short passages that included sentences such as "Mrs. Adams was knitting/knitted a new sweater"..."She wore her new garment...".…

Two word-by-word, self-paced reading experiments investigated the speed with which readers were sensitive to discourse-level anomalies. An account arguing for delayed sensitivity (Guzman & Klin, 2000) was contrasted with one allowing for rapid sensitivity (Myers & O'Brien, 1998). Anomalies related to spatial information (Experiment 1) and…

According to current theories in discourse research, readers monitor a series of 5 situational dimensions during narrative comprehension (Zwaan, Langston, & Graesser, 1995; Zwaan & Radvansky, 1998). These dimensions are time (e.g., the order of events), space (e.g., locations), protagonist (e.g., main character actions), causality (e.g., how one…

Presents results of a study indicating that, over many propositions appearing in passages that vary widely in content and vocabulary difficulty, early and later propositions are better recalled, and that the rated importance of a proposition predicts probability of recall independent of serial position. (HTH)

Reports findings of three experiments indicating that story plot unit structure is a good predictor of subjects' thematic judgments about the story, and that subjects are sensitive to a more abstract level of conceptualization than the thematic patterns tested, based on evaluations of the protagonist's plans in the story. (HTH)

Viewed as discourse, official forms exhibit identifiable text characteristics and elicit strategies for comprehension that take into account these characteristics, as well as context and the user's prior knowledge about the world. However, forms also have unique characteristics that require processes and strategies which differ in systematic ways…

Developments in linguistics, particularly in Europe in the work of T.A. Van Dijk, a broader conception of texts that shows promise for the study of reading. Textlinguistics covers a domain of linguistics studies that are involved with texts. Textlinguists are interested not only in those obvious immediate connecting mechanisms, such as anaphora,…