Our understanding of a story is highly dependent upon our ability to recognize the underlying purpose for actions described in the story. We need to view those actions as steps in, or reactions to, plans. This paper sketches some of the components of a model for the understanding of plans and social actions. The model is first applied to narrative…

This experiment investigated the assumption that children's learning and retention of prose material can be differentially affected by varying discrepancy from expectation (as established by an advance organizer). It was hypothesized that a passage which differed significantly from expectation would produce heightened arousal, which should in turn…

One-hundred and forty undergraduates were divided into seven equal groups; each group read five passages and then answered one of seven types of questions. However, after reading the sixth passage, all subjects received the same type of questions. Reading time for each passage was recorded, and students were encouraged to read faster. Significant…

In two experiments, high school students read and listened to either a signaled or nonsignaled expository passage. Signals consisted of preview sentences, underlined headings, and logical connective phrases. Results indicated a pattern in which the signaled groups performed better on recall of conceptual information and on generating high quality…

A model has been developed for studying the relation between text structure and reading comprehension, emphasizing the reader's use of world knowledge and text-structural knowledge to evaluate and interpret meaning from text. When the highlights of the model are considered from the perspective of various expository texts used in research on…

A technique for measuring comprehension of lengthy prose is presented. The "textual segmentation" procedure requires subjects to partition text into complete, meaningful units such as paragraphs, chapters, and books. Potential applications of textual segmentation include measurement of reading comprehension, readability, and criteria for…

Study of effects of contextual information on prose reading comprehension showed that contextual information aids comprehension and retention of prose material, with the degree of recall dependent upon the type of information.

This paper provides a general description of schema-theoretic models of language comprehension and examines some extensions of such models to the study of reading. The goal of schema theory is to specify the interface between the reader and the text: to specify how the reader's knowledge interacts with and shapes the information on the page and to…

Two studies investigated whether variations in the importance of inferences and the salience of premises within a text would affect the probability that the inference would be made. Six stories of about 500 words were used, with eight variations of each story. The target inference, and its plausibility, was constant across all versions. Inference…

This paper suggests that teachers concentrate on the ideational and structural properties of text rather than on information acquired from readability formulas when selecting and using texts. Emphasis is given to the importance of context in the analysis of text, and a framework is suggested for examining the text considering the functions texts…

Two studies assessed third, fifth, and seventh grade children's sensitivity to relative importance in prose. Children rated importance similarly to adults when assigned perspectives from which to read. The children's ratings were not necessarily idiosyncratic: they agreed more with each other than with adults rating the same material.…

This study attempted to increase the reading efficiency of normal readers by developing a method of producing telegraphic prose. The subjects' (undergraduate students in psychology) rank ordered the words in each sentence of a prose passage according to the importance of the words for communicating the main sentence idea. Specific treatment…

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)

This report examines the theory that when people understand a text, they create a complex scenario (or model) within which the events described might plausibly occur. In order to study construction and revision of such models, five subjects were given difficult-to-understand texts, and were later asked to discuss the processing they went through…