Psychology of language 5th edition carroll test bank

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CHAPTER 7 DISCOURSE COMPREHENSION AND MEMORY Chapter Outline Introduction Comprehension of Discourse Local and Global Discourse Structure Cohesion Strategies Used to Establish Coherence Role of Working Memory Summary Memory for Discourse Surface Representations Propositional Representations Situational Models Simultaneous Investigations of All Three Levels Summary Schemata and Discourse Processing Schemata Genres Narrative Discourse Processing Inaccessibility of Knowledge Summary Educational Implications

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Actively Processing Discourse Connecting Propositions in Discourse Identifying the Main Points Building Global Structures Tailoring Comprehension Activities to Tests Summary

Key Terms local structure

global structure

coherence

cohesion

reference cohesion

substitution cohesion

ellipsis

cohesion

conjunctive cohesion

lexical cohesion

anaphoric reference

anaphor

antecedent

cataphoric reference

given information

new information

given/new strategy

bridging

foreground

background

reinstatement

eading span task

surface representation

propositional representatio

situational model

schema

genre

narrative discourse

expository discourse

story grammar

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episodes

anomalous suspens

reactive processing

self-reference effect

Suggested Activities 1. To increase student awareness of inferencing, you can discuss the difference between inference and implication. To inference is to draw a conclusion based on what one already knows. An implication is a relationship between two sentences where the truth of one sentence suggests, but does not require, that the second sentence be true.

Have students generate pairs of sentences that contain inferences, as per Carroll’s example: Last Christmas Eugene went to a lot of parties.

This Christmas he got very drunk again.

Discuss the nature of the inference, including what was known and what had to be “filled in” in order to understand the latter two sentences.

Then consider implications: If I work all day, I’ll finish this project.

I did not work all day, therefore I did not finish the project.

Ask whether the second sentence is true, given the information from the first.

Discuss how inferences and implications might be falsely drawn.

2. To increase student appreciation of the role of cohesion in discourse, you can bring in examples of schizophrenic discourse for class discussion.

Rochester and Martin (1979) have numerous examples of “word salads” in schizophrenic speech. In addition, Tartter (1986) has examples of both schizophrenic and aphasic language; it is instructive to have students try to tell the difference. Most students will have no trouble identifying that schizophrenic language is unusual, but will have a much harder time explaining the types of cohesive devices that are missing in this discourse.

Rochester, S., & Martin, J. R. (1979). Crazy talk: A study of the discourse of schizophrenic speakers. New York: Plenum.

Tartter, V. C. (1986). Language processes. New York: Holt.

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3. To increase student understand of the role of schemata in discourse processing, you can present them with a passage from the Anderson and Pichert (1978) study discussed in class. The passage is as follows: The two boys ran until they came to the driveway. “See, I told you today was good for skipping school, “ said Mark. “Mom is never home on Thursday,” he added. Tall hedges hid the house from the road so the pair strolled across the finely landscaped yard. “I never knew your place was so big,” said Pete.

“Yeah, but it’s nicer now than it used to be since Dad had the new stone siding put on added the fireplace.” There were front and back doors and a side door that led to the garage, which was empty except for three parked 10speed bikes. They went to the side door, Mark explaining that it was always open in case his younger sisters got home earlier than their mother. Pete wanted to see the house so Mark started with the living room. It, like the rest of the downstairs, was newly painted. Mark turned on the stereo, the noise of which worried Pete. “Don’t worry, the nearest house is a quarter of a mile away,” Mark shouted. Pete felt more comfortable observing that no houses could be seen in any direction beyond the huge yard. The dining room, with all the china, silver and cut glass, was no place to play so the boys moved into the kitchen where they made sandwiches. Mark said they wouldn’t go to the basement because it had been damp and musty ever since the new plumbing had been installed. “This is where my Dad keeps his famous painting and his coin collection,” Mark said as they peered into the den. Mark bragged that he could get spending money whenever he needed it since he’d discovered that his Dad kept a lot in the desk drawer. There were three upstairs bedrooms. Mark showed Pete his mother’s closest, which was filled with furs and the locked box which held her jewels. His sisters’ room was uninteresting except for the TV which Mark carried into his room. Mark bragged that the bathroom in the hall was his since one had been added to his sisters’ room for their use. The big highlight in his room, though, was a leak in the ceiling where the old roof had finally rotted.

Tape-record the passage. Before presenting it to students, prepare two instructions. One half of the students should be told that they are a home buyer and as they listen to the tape they should imagine that they are considering purchasing the home. The other half is told they are burglars and as they listen to the tape they should imagine burglarizing the home.

Then play the tape and when it is over, ask each group to recall what they remember about the house. Then, give them the other perspective and ask them if they recall anything else. Finally, compare your results with those discussed in the text.

Anderson, R. C., & Pichert, J. W. (1978). Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift of perspective. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17, 1-12.

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Suggested Readings Baddeley, A.D., & Hitch, G. (1974). Working memory. In G.H. Bower (Ed.), The psychology of learning and motivation: Advances in research and theory (Vol. 8, pp. 47--89). New York: Academic Press.

Foltz, P. W., Kintsch, W., & Landauer, T. K. (1998). The measurement of textual coherence with Latent Semantic Analysis. Discourse Processes, 25, 285-307.

Discussion of latent semantic analysis, a new method of analyzing discourse.

Gerrig, R. J. (1993). Experiencing narrative worlds: On the psychological activities of reading. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Engaging study of interplay between thought and emotion in narrative comprehension and how authors and readers construct narrative worlds.

Halliday, M. A. K., & Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.

A primary source for the study of cohesion in English.

Johnson-Laird, P.N. (1983) Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference, and Consciousness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Kintsch, W. (1998). Comprehension: A paradigm for cognition. A recent appraisal of work on discourse comprehension by a major researcher in the field.

Mandler, J. M. (1984). Stories, scripts, and scenes: Aspects of schema theory.

Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. A thoughtful analysis of several issues in schema theory.

Polanyi, L. (1985). Telling the American story: A structured and cultural analysis of conversational storytelling. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Singer, M. (1990). Psychology of language: An introduction to sentence and discourse processes. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Detailed discussion of theory and research in discourse comprehension.

Suggested Web Sites http://www.tcd.ie/Psychology/Ruth_Byrne/mental_models/ A “gentle introduction” to mental models created by Ruth Burne and Philip Johnson-Laird.

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Multiple Choice Questions 1. The local structure of a text refers to: a. the inferences readers draw during discourse comprehension b. the relationships between individual sentences in a discourse c. the distinction between given and new information d. the process of referring back to previous material in discourse Answer: b (p. 160) 2. _______ connects individual sentences and ideas in a discourse. a. Ellipsis b. Reference c. Macrostructure d. Microstructure Answer: c (p. 160) 3. The sentences The woman lost track of her little boy at the mall. She became very worried illustrate what type of cohesion? a. substitution b. lexical c. ellipsis d. reference Answer: d (p. 160) 4. By replacing (rather than repeating) a lexical item in a sentence, we are using the form of cohesion known as: a. ellipsis b. anaphor c. lexical d. antecedent Answer: a (p. 160) 5. The type of cohesion in which we use an expression to refer back to something previously mentioned in discourse is called ____ reference. a. lexical b. cataphoric c. assimilative d. anaphoric Answer: d (p. 161) 6. The difficulty of reading passages has been found to depend on: a. the distance of an antecedent to an anaphor b. whether a passage has both local and global structure c. whether the passage contains given or new information d. whether the sentence contains anaphoric or cataphoric reference Answer: a (p. 162) 65

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7. Which of the following are strategies for establishing coherence? a. given/new, direct matching, and reinstating old information b. substitution, ellipsis, and conjunctive c. reiteration, synonomy, and hyponymy d. pronominal, demonstrative, and comparative Answer: a (pp. 162-164) 8. The distinction between direct matching and bridging is that in bridging: a. the reference is to something that occurred several sentences back b. the reference is to material that must be inferred c. the reference is by synonym instead of by exact repetition d. the reference has been ellipted Answer: b (pp. 163-164) 9. The strategy likely to be used to comprehend the sentences Last Christmas Eugene went to a lot of parties. This Christmas he got very drunk again is: a. anaphoric reference b. reinstatement c. bridging d. none of the above Answer: b (p. 164) 10. Which of the following was NOT a focus of the Daneman and Carpenter (1980) study? a. examining tradeoffs between storage and processing functions of working memory b. examining individual differences in the size of working memory c. measuring the relationship between the size of working memory and SAT scores d. measuring speed/accuracy tradeoffs in reading complex text passages Answer: d (pp. 165-166) 11. Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that students with better performance on the reading span task: a. had more trouble comprehending anaphoric pronouns b. had better verbal SAT scores c. were better at a simple span task d. were slower readers Answer: b (pp. 165-166) 12. The three representations of discourse are: a. direct, demonstrative, and comparative b. local, global, and situational c. reference, lexical, and conjunction d. propositional, surface, and situational Answer: d (p. 168) CHAPTER 7

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13. The level of discourse that specifies the meaning of a passage apart from the exact words used is the: a. surface representation b. verbatim representation c. propositional representation d. situational model Answer: c (p. 168) 14. Jarvella (1971) presented individuals with a long oral passage, interrupted it at irregular intervals, and had them write down as much of the preceding discourse as they could, verbatim. The results showed that the percentage of correct recall of a clause was greater if: a. it was part of the current sentence as opposed to the preceding sentence b. they were allowed to try to complete the sentence orally c. it was pragmatically significant d. it could be imagined visually Answer: a (p. 168) 15. .Kintsch and Keenan (1973) found that sentences with more propositions _____ than those with fewer propositions. a. are harder to recall b. are easier to recall c. take longer to read d. take less time to read Answer: c (p. 169) 16. McKoon and Ratliff’s (1980) study of spreading activation showed that the greatest degree of priming was between propositions: a. close in the discourse structure b. close in the surface structure c. similar in verbatim representation d. concurrently represented in a situational model Answer: a (p. 169) 17. Inferences that are drawn during discourse comprehension: a. reflect the imaginative contribution of skilled readers b. are the result of recall errors c. are necessary for processing discourse effectively d. are rarely drawn when reading printed material Answer: c (p. 170)

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18. Perrig and Kintsch (1985) found that when a text used sentences such as North of the highway just east of the river is a gas station, subjects were more likely to store the text in the form of: a. a surface representation b. a propositional representation c. a situational model d. a motion sentence Answer: c (p. 172) 19. Memory for _______ shows the least forgetting over time. a. surface text b. verbatim representation c. situations d. propositions Answer: c (p. 175) 20. A structure in semantic memory that specifies the general or expected arrangement of a body of information is called a: a. discourse model b. situational model c. parsing mechanism d. schema Answer: d (p. 176) 21. Studies of the role of titles in text comprehension have shown that: a. titles are only comprehended after the passage is understood b. titles orient readers to particular aspects of a passage c. readers often find titles to be distracting d. subjects ignore titles when searching for an appropriate schema Answer: b (p. 177) 22. Studies of the processing of episodes have found that: a. we tend to remember episodes in an all-or-none fashion b. reading times are fastest at the beginnings and ends of episodes c. we remember reactions and goals better than attempts and outcomes d. readers are oblivious to the emotional responses of characters in stories Answer: a (p. 180) 23. Cross-cultural investigations of story recall have found that: a. cultures differ significantly in what constitutes a good story b. recall patterns are very similar across cultures c. oral cultures tend to prefer shorter stories d. children in all cultures recalled stories better than adults Answer: b (pp. 181-182)

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24. Anomalous suspense occurs when: a. we find a novel suspenseful even when we know how it turns out b. we prefer unpredictable stories over more predictable ones c. stories elicit cognitive reactions rather than emotional ones d. the title of a story conflicts with the story content Answer: a (p. 183) 25. According to the text discussion, students might have difficulty remembering the most important points in a lecture because: a. the schemata of students is in conflict with the schemata of lecturers b. students rely on written text to construct an appropriate schema c. students lack a relevant schema for unfamiliar material d. the creation of a schema during a lecture competes with the auditory processing of the lecture Answer: c (p. 185) 26. According to the text discussion, the best overall comprehension strategy when faced with unfamiliar material is to: a. use schemata to guide discourse processing b. draw as many inferences as possible c. use shadowing as much as possible d. pay close attention to local discourse structure Answer: d (pp. 186) 27. Palincsar and Brown (1984) were able to demonstrate substantial increases in student reading comprehension when: a. titles oriented the students to certain passages in the text b. the students read the passage out loud c. the students were taught to formulate questions that addressed the important points of the text d. the students chose the material themselves Answer: c (p. 186) 28. Reder and Anderson (1980) compared recall of standard passages with recall of passages with many details omitted. They found that retention was: a. best with the standard passages b. best when the details were omitted c. equivalent in the two conditions d. best when details were presented tersely Answer: b (p. 188)

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