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…

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…

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…

Examines the influence of interclause connectives on inference generation. Finds that readers incorporate causal knowledge-based inferences in the discourse representations for sentences containing a causal connective, and that connectives elicit inferences that are based on the connective's meaning. (SR)

Investigates the language comprehension of elementary school children and the factors that affected acquisition of knowledge from connected discourse. Factors examined included oral and written language, message structure, characteristics of the learner, and conditions of the learning situation. (AA)

Research into the influence of a context sentence on the processing of a subsequent sentence in spoken discourse examined two issues: (1) whether context influences the immediate processing and organization of a subsequent clause, and (2) whether listeners make certain types of context-based inferences prior to the end of a sentence. Three…

Artificial intelligence research on natural language understanding is discussed in this report using the notions that (1) natural language understanding systems must "see" sentences as elements whose significance resides in the contribution they make to the larger whole, and (2) a natural language understanding computer system must…

The development of a story grammar represents an attempt to describe the higher order cognitive structures that are used to encode, represent, and retrieve information from stories such as folktales or fables. These structures, defined as a set of rewrite rules, specify the types of information that should occur in stories and the types of logical…

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…

Written for researchers and graduate students, this book--a collection of essays by cognitive scientists, socio- and psycholinguists, and English, reading, and language arts educators--explores theoretical and research questions associated with the relationships among oral and written language, listening and reading, and speaking and writing. The…

The story recall abilities of 26 dyslexic children were tested, using a story schema representation previously used in research with normal children. Comparisons within the disabled reader group found significant differences in story schema knowledge, but comparisons between normal and disabled readers revealed no significant differences. However,…

Demonstrates that reactivation of unsatisfied goal information depended on the type of original goal context and whether it was fully reinstated and that reinstatement of goal information from the distant target episode was successful only when the context was fully reinstated. Supports models of comprehension that assume reactivation of relevant…

Tests two views of how relevant global information becomes readily available to readers. Demonstrates that backgrounded information became readily available if it shared features in common with the current contents of working memory. Shows that this occurred independently of whether the information was relevant or thematically related;…

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)

Tests how well two models of text comprehension (one referential and one causal) predicted the importance ratings and the recall of procedural texts. Finds better predictive power of the causal model for importance ratings; neither model performed well with recall; and neither model was as predictive of procedural text as they were in previous…