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…

Provides further evidence of the psychological importance of semantic roles for verbal learning and broadens the realm of earlier work with semantic roles by using connected prose rather than individual sentences. (HOD)

A study examined the effects of within domain processing on the recall of idea units as well as the potential reversals in performance resulting from the passing of time. Subjects for the experiment were 89 undergraduate students randomly assigned to six conditions related to target words in a reading passage: counting e's, determining the…

"Levels of processing" is an explanatory framework postulating that differences in memory processing quality or effort affect the duration of the memory trace. Using recall (immediate, one week, or two week) for connected discourse processed under three semantic and three orthographic interference conditions, as well as a noninterference…

A propositional network system for representing the logical and semantic information contained in a text is described. The reliability of scoring information recalled from reading, using this representational system, is found to vary with the scoring goal. Determination of the amount of information recalled is found to be extremely reliable. A…

Two studies were conducted to find correlates of personality or cognitive style that were exemplified in differences in recall of semantic information from text. In both studies the texts were analyzed for the pattern of subordination, or hierarchy, of the semantic information that was contained in the passages using a method described by Meyer.…

A sample of 80 first- and second-grade children selected to represent four levels of reading competence were tested in their recognition of semantic, syntactic, and lexical change in sentences previously decoded during prose reading. (JMB)

Experimental investigations of children's prose comprehension with special emphasis on the development of skills necessary for reading comprehension are examined in this paper. The research is discussed under four major headings which correspond to specific comprehension skills: identifying main ideas, understanding logical structure, making…

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)

In an analysis of a processing activities model of memory applied to connected discourse, 206 college students assigned to eight conditions in two studies evidenced significantly greater recall when provided with semantic level tasks than either surface feature analysis or reading control (intentional and incidental) conditions. Additionally,…