Transitive inferences from narrative relations.

Inferences drawn while reading artificial set inclusion passages tend to be different than those made when reasoning with categorical syllogisms and linear orderings even though all 3 describe transitive relations. The present study tests the hypothesis that this disparity results from reasoners' perceptions of the commonality among category terms. In 3 experiments, students were given artificial set inclusion paragraphs that either contained convergent category terms that possess a common superordinate, similar to what is found in syllogistic reasoning (e.g., R. Revlin et al; see record 1979-22790-001), or they were given divergent category terms that do not possess a common superordinate (similar to R. A. Griggs; see record 1977-11973-001). The perceived commonality among the category terms affected the interpretations of the narrative relations and determined the pattern of inferences that students were willing to draw. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context inferences in the comprehension of sentences.

Examined the relative viability of the Inference-on-Input and Inference-Later hypotheses with regard to context inferences, using 16 university students. Ss were timed in their verification of sentences which either paraphrased part of an antecedent sentence or expressed one of its implications. When the test sentences followed the antecedents immediately, the latency difference between paraphrases and implications was negligible; but after a 9.5 sec delay, Ss needed almost 200 msec longer to verify implications than paraphrases. It is concluded that the memory representaion that results when a person encodes a sentence does not reliably include implications of the type examined here. (French summary) (27 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Understanding clinical narrative text

A linguistic analysis of the narrative which appears in patient documents, in the domain of urology, has shown that the information is conveyed by a small number of semantic statement types composed of syntactic combinations of medical and English word classes. It has been shown that words from different classes occurring in the diagnosis for the patient disease follow some regular grammatical rules. This impressive linguistic regularity in clinical narrative has made it encouraging to develop a recognizer which is capable of recognizing disease diagnosis in the narrative clinical documents in the domain of urology. The recognizer was implemented using the C language. This recognizer output information which could be refined to a form suitable for management by a database management system for further computerized information processing.     

On-line evidence for elaborative logical inferences in text.

A model of propositional-logic reasoning proposed by M. D. S. Braine, B. J. Reiser, and B. Rumain (1984) claims that inferences such as "p or q; not p /∴ q" are made spontaneously by readers at the moment both premises are available. This claim is inconsistent with some evidence in the text-processing literature that suggests that only those inferences necessary for textual coherence are made spontaneously. In the present study, participants read stories in which a logical inference was not necessary to maintain textual coherence, and inference making was assessed with on-line probes. Two experiments tested logical forms central to Braine et al's model, and both indicated that participants were making the logical inferences. Two further experiments replicated this result with stories that did not begin with thematic titles. These findings support Braine et al.'s prediction that some propositional-logic inferences are made routinely in texts that do not require them for coherence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of genre expectations on text comprehension.

This article investigates whether expectations about discourse genre influence the process and products of text comprehension. Ss read texts either with a literary story or with a news story as the purported genre. Subsequently, they verified statements pertaining to the texts. Two experiments demonstrated that Ss reading under a literary perspective had longer reading times, better memory for surface information, and a poorer memory for situational information than those reading under a news perspective. Regression analyses of reading times produced findings that were consistent with the memory data. The results support the notion that readers differentially allocate their processing resources according to their expectations about the genre of a text. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging and inhibitory control in text comprehension.

The degree to which inhibitory regulation is related to the initial perception of information or to the control of response tendencies was examined by asking participants to read paragraphs that included italicized, to-be-ignored words. Older adults were more likely than younger adults to begin vocalization of the italicized words and to make text comprehension errors involving the to-be-ignored information. However, younger adults were subsequently more likely to recognize the words they had apparently ignored, suggesting that inhibitory regulation controls selectivity in response rather than initial perception. Commonalities between inhibitory regulation and source monitoring paradigms are demonstrated, and discussion focuses on the degree to which on-line monitoring of goal-relevant response underlies age-related deficits in both domains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dimensions of situation model construction in narrative comprehension.

Several factors potentially influence the extent to which readers form a coherent mental representation during story comprehension. The main factors are argument overlap (i.e., connections between text constituents) and situational continuity (i.e., connections between the components of the referential situation model). The authors distinguished 3 dimensions of situational continuity: temporal, spatial, and causal continuity. Results of 2 reading-time studies involving naturalistic stories suggest that readers simultaneously monitor multiple dimensions of the situation model (particularly temporality and causality) under a normal reading instruction. In addition, the construction of a situation model does not critically depend on the presence or absence of argument overlap. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Constructing macrostructure for expository text.

In Exp I, 108 (36 Ss at each level) 3rd, 5th, and 7th graders and 36 graduate students read short expository paragraphs and performed tasks that required the generation of macrostructure. Ss chose the best title, wrote a summary sentence, or wrote 1 additional sentence for each paragraph. Some paragraphs were not well structured; others contained an anomalous sentence. Results show that performance improved with age. The title task was easier than the summary task, which in turn was easier than the next-sentence task. Only adult Ss reflected the presence of anomalous information, and the effects were different on each of the 3 tasks. In Exp II, the title task with 4 response options was administered to 24 undergraduates. Results show that Ss broadened their representations to encompass the deviant sentence in both related and unrelated paragraphs. In the summary-sentence task, proficient adults—who monitored their own comprehension—responded like children. It is suggested that children need instruction variations in both task and in text, introduced gradually and systematically, in order to deal with potential sources of difficulty. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Age differences in the elaboration of inferences from text.

Employed a multiple choice test to assess 64 5th graders' (pre-adolescents) and 64 11th graders' (late adolescents) acquisition of 2 kinds of information from brief texts: premise and inference information. Replicating earlier studies, age differences were obtained in inference performance with baseline versions of the texts. In contrast, however, when the texts provided sufficient contextual support, the inference performance of preadolescents was facilitated to a point of equivalence with that of late adolescents. This facilitation could not be accounted for by corresponding effects of premise performance and is, therefore, interpreted as evidence of age differences in the tendency to elaborate inferences from text. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reader beliefs and meaning construction in narrative text.

This research examined how transmission and transaction beliefs about reading affect comprehension, engagement, and holistic understanding of narrative text. Transaction beliefs, which emphasize reader-generated meaning, were related positively to the type and number of reader responses as well as to the sophistication of one's holistic interpretation. Transmission beliefs, which emphasize understanding the author's intended meaning, were unrelated to all outcome measures. Transmission and transaction beliefs were unrelated to each other. These findings support the view that transaction beliefs facilitate meaning construction of narrative text, whereas transmission beliefs do not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distinctions between reading comprehension and locating information in text.

Reading comprehension is usually operationalized as text recall. However, locating information such as facts, names, or numbers in text is a reading task requiring comprehension that is distinct from text recall in two respects: (1) cognitive processes that control reading comprehension and locating information are expected to be different; (2) the frequency of engagement in comprehension and locating are expected to be independent. We examined these expectations by identifying 4 reading tasks frequently performed by 45 electronics engineers and technicians. Real world reading tasks were simulated with sets of test items in the following domains: (a) comprehending articles, (b) locating information in schematics, (c) locating information in articles, and (d) locating information in manuals. Factor analyses for both the engineers and technicians resulted in two factors, one for comprehension (a) and one for locating information (b, c, d), with a correlation of less than .20. Factor analyses of reading engagement for both groups resulted in factors of (a) comprehending articles, (b) locating information in articles, (c) reading schematics, and (d) reading manuals. Canonical correlations for both groups showed no association between reading engagement variables and reading competence (comprehending and locating) variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Monitoring text comprehension: Individual differences in epistemological standards.

Examined individual differences in reading comprehension standards by asking 9 undergraduates enrolled in a "Fundamentals of Psychology" course to describe the criteria they used to decide whether or not they had comprehended textbook chapters. Ss were classified as having a dualistic (fact-oriented) or a relativistic (context-oriented) conception of knowledge on the basis of their ratings of attitude statements drawn from the work of W. G. Perry (1968). Comprehension criteria reported by dualists more often involved the knowledge category found in the B. S. Bloom et al (1956) book, Taxonomy, and those reported by relativists, the comprehension or application categories. The nature and number of reported comprehension criteria were found to be predictive of course grades. Ss reporting the use of comprehension or application criteria earned better grades than those reporting the use of knowledge criteria; Ss reporting the use of more than one criterion earned better grades than those reporting the use of a single criterion. These data suggest that one's epistemological beliefs may dictate one's choice of comprehension standards and that these epistemological standards, in turn, may control the effectiveness of one's text processing efforts. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Processing of logically valid and logically invalid conditional inferences in discourse comprehension.

Two competing theories of processing of conditionals (if-then) were tested. Syntactic theories posit that people only draw inferences conforming to the logically valid modus ponens (MP) schema. Mental models theories predict that people draw MP and invalid affirming-the-consequent (AC) inferences. Three experiments tested these predictions. Participants read short stories that conformed to either the MP or AC form but without conclusions, and they completed either priming or recognition tasks. Results indicate that both MP and AC inferences occur during discourse processing: MP and AC premise forms prime their respective conclusions, participants erroneously judged that they had read the conclusions to MP and AC arguments, and AC inferences did not stem from a biconditional interpretation of conditionals. Findings support mental models theories. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Component processes in text comprehension and some of their interactions.

58 college students read 12 passages word by word in the moving-window method. Word reading times (WRTs) were analyzed in multiple-regression analyses. 16 attributes of the stimulus materials were quantified as measures of specific component processes. WRTs were predicted by most of the 16 attributes. There were significant effects for such word-level attributes as length, frequency, and repetition, presumed to reflect processes involved in word identification. Such sentence-level (SL) attributes as sentence imagery and the number of new concepts in the sentence, considered indicators of integration and abstraction of the sentence gist, had a significant effect on WRTs, particularly at the sentence-final word. In addition, WRTs of sentence-final words increased linearly with the number of new concepts in the sentence. The text-level attributes that significantly influenced WRTs were the serial position of the sentence in the passage and the genre of the passage. These attributes were considered indicators of topic identification and intersentence integration, respectively. Word-level variables, word length and word frequency, interacted with the load or complexity of processes at the SL and at the text level. Similarly, SL variables interacted with the complexity of text-level variables. These interactions are consistent with models of reading that assume that lower-level processes interact with higher-level processes. (97 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The function of frame in the comprehension of scientific text.

Children (mean age?=?10 yrs and 1 mo) participated in an experiment to examine how knowledge of the problem frame (C. H. Frederiksen, 1986) affects the construction of the macrostructure (T. A. van Dijk and W. Kintsch, 1983) and enhances text comprehension. Groups of Ss were administered versions of text without annotation, with indication of the nodes of the frame, or with the macrostructure underlined. Ss read a text, wrote a summary, and answered comprehension questions. Performance of good comprehenders and good summarizers improved only when they were provided with macrostructure information. In contrast, poor comprehenders/summarizers benefited from all aids. The data demonstrate the positive role of frames in macrostructure construction and support the model developed by van Dijk and Kintsch. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Depending on my mood: Mood-driven influences on text comprehension.

Reading comprehension is a critical component of success in educational settings. To date, research on text processing in educational and cognitive psychological domains has focused predominantly on cognitive influences on comprehension and, in particular, those influences that might be derived from particular tasks or strategies. However, there is growing interest in documenting the influences of emotional factors on the processes and products of text comprehension, because these factors are less likely to be associated with explicit reading strategies. The present study examines this issue by evaluating the degree to which mood can influence readers' processing of text. Participants in control, happy-induced, or sad-induced groups thought aloud while reading expository texts. Happy, sad, and neutral moods influenced the degree to which readers engaged in particular types of coherence-building processes in the service of comprehension. Although reading strategies clearly influence processing, understudied factors that are less explicitly goal-driven, such as mood, can similarly impact comprehension activity. These findings have important implications for the role of mood on reading instruction and evaluation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Memory-based processing as a mechanism of automaticity in text comprehension.

A widespread theoretical assumption is that many processes involved in text comprehension are automatic, with automaticity typically defined in terms of properties (e.g., speed, effort). In contrast, the authors advocate for conceptualization of automaticity in terms of underlying cognitive mechanisms and evaluate one prominent account, the memory-based processing account, which states that one mechanism underlying automatization involves a shift from algorithm-based interpretation of stimuli to retrieval of prior interpretations of those stimuli. During practice, participants repeatedly read short stories containing novel conceptual combinations that were disambiguated with either their dominant or subordinate meaning. During transfer, the combinations were embedded in new sentences that either preserved or changed the disambiguated meaning. The primary dependent variable was reading time in the disambiguating region of target sentences. Supporting the memory-based processing account, speed-ups with practice were larger for repeated versus unrepeated items of the same type, reading times for subordinate versus dominant meanings of the combinations converged on later trials, and practiced meanings were retrieved when items appeared in a transfer context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategic processing during comprehension.

This study addresses 3 questions: How flexible are readers when reading strategically? How is strategic processing affected by properties of the text? and Do some strategies lead to better text retention than others? Participants read short narratives and thought aloud with an instruction to either explain, predict, associate, or understand. The think-aloud protocols were used to predict sentence reading times for other participants who read silently with the same strategies. The results indicated that readers are capable of strategically controlling the inferences that they generate. However, strategic control comes at some cost in that it limits the resources devoted to other inferences. Furthermore, strategic processing is heavily constrained by a text. Text-based explanations occurred when there was an identifiable causal antecedent in the prior text. Knowledge-based inferences occurred when there were no antecedents and when new characters and objects were introduced. These effects occurred across reading strategies. Reading to explain led to better memory, but only when reading silently. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Anxiety and the interpretation of ambiguity: A text comprehension study.

A. T. Beck's influential cognitive account of anxiety has led to the prediction that individuals vulnerable to anxiety should favor threatening interpretations of ambiguity (e.g., Beck and D. A. Clark, 1988; Beck et al, 1986). The current study introduces a novel adaptation of the RSVP technique, previously used in text comprehension research, to evaluate this hypothesis. Results suggest that a group of 24 high trait anxious students did indeed selectively impose threatening interpretations on unconstrained ambiguous sentences. In contrast, a matched group of 24 low trait anxious students appeared to selectively impose non-threatening interpretations on such ambiguous sentences. These findings are fully consistent with the predicted anxiety-linked interpretative bias. Specific testable hypotheses are developed concerning the types of interpretative idiosyncrasies that plausibly may contribute to pathological anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)