Discourse processing and comprehension Flashcards
difference between construction stage and integration stage in Kintsch’s discourse model
Construction stage: surface (meaning and syntactic parsing) and text-based (propositions and inference)
Integration stage: situational model (inter-related propositions integrated into coherent structure where conflicting or incorrect inferences are resolved.
Evidence of mental propositions
Ratcliff (1978): “the geese crossed the horizon as the wind shuffled the clouds’
asked participants to read sentence-distractor task-recall sentence. given cue word from either or different proposition and found better recall if from the same i.e. ‘geese’ better cue for ‘horizon’ than ‘wind’.
Mental/situational model?
VanDijk: model represents different types of information about situations described in discourse. Models are dynamically updated as discourse progresses.
evidence that comprehension form spatial representations
Bransford: memories abstract stories 1. context no picture 2. picture then context 3. context then picture found that picture help in remembering context when presented before model had been formed at the time of comprehension.
Describe an experiment or two that investigates memory of surface structure and situation
Bransford: frog on the log: situation was remembered better than surface structure and situation was better remembered the more different the location of the objects.
Fletcher: gave a passage to read - later given incorrect sentences that varied either on surface structure, text-based or situational. structure hardest-situational easiest because propositions are organised as one unit containing information about spatial representation between objects.
What does the ‘Moses illusion tell us about attention in language comprehension?
Erickson: ‘how many animals of each type did Moses take onto the ark’- people automatically apply situation specific real-world knowledge. Can be reduced with addition of it, there or capitalisation. Attention also found to be directed to first object of a sentence better. Position of target words effects ability to recall and best position is most recent substructure.
What has research shown about primary and recently effect in memory in language comprehension
Comprehends are best are remembering information/objects from the most recent substructure
Different types of inference: bridging inference
Bridging inference: Haviland: links old and new information
1. ‘We got some beer out the trunk. The beer was warm’
2.’We checked the picnic supplies. The beer was warm’
took longer on 2 then 1 because people had to determine the relationship between picnic and beer.
Causal bridging inference
Singer: causal vs. temporal.
1. ‘Dorothy poured water on the bonfire. The bonfire went out.’
2. ‘Dorothy put water next to the bonfire. The bonfire went out’.
Asked if water extinguishes fire: Real world-knowledge accessed during causal bridging to link the event of one to cause the other.
Elaborative inference
Inference that requires extending information provided by text to real-world knowledge. Not an automatic product of comprehension.
“The man took a picture of the church. The scene was more beautiful than he remembered.” took longer than bridging where information is already available therefore different mechanisms used.
According to Garrod & Terras, how are ‘open roles’ filled in discourse processing?
Open roles is filled in automatically in bridging inference.
“the teacher was writing on a blackboard/a letter. She dropped her pen/chalk.” when the sentences included the wrong object for the open role. Suggest inference based on real world knowledge isn’t made until later in the process. Eye movements between ‘writing’ and object suggest that the is a 2 stage process: 1. bonding (lexical content automatically activated and bonds to verb and 2. resolution (uses real-world knowledge to check assumption).
