3.6 - Discourse Memory Flashcards
What is Surface Representation?
The exact words of the discourse
You need to remember the exact words in order to recognize the correct answer
What are the three levels where we store discourse memory?
Surface Representation
Propositional Representation
Situational Model
The Surface Representation is held in WM ______ then it ______.
Just long enough for us to understand the sentence
Is forgotten
What are the two types of Propositional Representations?
Explicit Propositions
Implicit Propositions
What are Explicit Propositions?
Basic ideas
Those actually stated
What are Implicit Propositions?
Inferred information
Ideas that were inferred
In the following sentence, what information is explicit and what is inferred?
She was excited about the birthday party. After blowing out the candles, she opened the gifts.
Explicit: Blowing out candles
Implicit: There was a birthday cake
Both explicit and implicit propositions are stored together in ______.
Long term memory
What did Kintsch do in his 1974 cigarette experiment?
He had Subjects read sentences that were either explicit or implicit
After reading the sentences, the subjects were asked: “Did a discarded cigarette start the fire?”
Subjects were either asked immediately after reading the sentences or after a delay.
(Explicit: A carelessly disgarded burning cigarette started a fire. The fire destroyed many acres of virgin forest.)
(Implicit: A burning cigarette was carelessly disgarded. The fire destroyed many acres of virgin forest.)
How did the subjects respond in Kintsch’s 1974 cigarette experiment when there was NO delay? Why?
Subjects with the explicit sentences responded more quickly than those who recieved the implicit sentence.
The exact words were still in working memory.
How did the subjects respond in Kintsch’s 1974 cigarette experiment when there after a delay? Why?
Both groups of subjects responded at the same speed. There was no response time difference. (This meant the explicit group slowed down.)
Information was now stored in long term memory
What is the Situational Model?
Holds the visual model of the discourse (like a “mental movie”)
What was Bransford et al’s 1972 experiment with the turtle sentences?
Subjects read one of the following sentences:
- Three turtles rested on a floating log & a fish swam beneath them
- Three turtles rested beside a floating log & a fish swam beneath them.
Later the subjects were given a recognition test. Did you read the sentence: “A fish swam beneath a floating log”?
What did Bransford et al find in their 1972 experiment with the turtle sentences? Why?
Subjects who read the first sentence (turtles on the log) were more likely to mistake that they had read this sentence
Because the situational models for the sentences matched.
What did Kintsch et al want to look at in their 1990 experiment (Jack sentences)?
The strength of these three different memory representations
