Toward a model of text comprehension and production.

The semantic structure of texts can be described both at the local microlevel and at a more global macrolevel. A model for text comprehension based on this notion accounts for the formation of a coherent semantic text base in terms of a cyclical process constrained by limitations of working memory. Furthermore, the model includes macro-operators, whose purpose is to reduce the information in a text base to its gist, that is, the theoretical macrostructure. These operations are under the control of a schema, which is a theoretical formulation of the comprehender's goals. The macroprocesses are predictable only when the control schema can be made explicit. On the production side, the model is concerned with the generation of recall and summarization protocols. This process is partly reproductive and partly constructive, involving the inverse operation of the macro-operators. The model is applied to a paragraph from a psychological research report, and methods for the empirical testing of the model are developed.

[1]  B. Meyer.  The organization of prose and its effects on memory , 1975 .

[2]  V. Dijk,et al.  Some Aspects Of Text Grammars , 1972 .

[3]  Donald A. Waterman,et al.  Identifying the Relevant Aspects of a Problem Text , 1977, Cogn. Sci..

[4]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Storage of Complex Information in Memory: Some Implications of the Speed with which Inferences Can be Made. , 1972 .

[5]  James L. McClelland,et al.  Sensory and cognitive determinants of reading speed , 1975 .

[6]  Jerzy Neyman,et al.  Proceedings of the Berkeley Symposium on Mathematical Statistics and Probability : held at the Statistical Laboratory, Department of Mathematics, University of California, August 13-18, 1945, January 27-29, 1946 , 1949 .

[7]  Eugene Charniak,et al.  Framed PAINTING: The Representation of a Common Sense Knowledge Fragment , 1977, Cogn. Sci..

[8]  N. S. Johnson,et al.  Remembrance of things parsed: Story structure and recall , 1977, Cognitive Psychology.

[9]  J G Greeno,et al.  Invariance of inference time when information was presented in different linguistic formats , 1974, Memory & cognition.

[10]  Susan R. Goldman,et al.  Discourse Memory and Reading Comprehension Skill. , 1976 .

[11]  Richard C. Anderson,et al.  Recall of Previously Unrecallable Information Following a Shift in Perspective. Technical Report No. 41. , 1977 .

[12]  Aleksandr R. Luria,et al.  The mechanism of "dynamic aphasia" , 1968 .

[13]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Comment on se rappelle et on resume des histoires (How We Remember and Summarize Stories). , 1975 .

[14]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Reading comprehension and readability in educational practice and psychological theory , 1979 .

[15]  B. Colby.  A Partial Grammar of Eskimo Folktales1 , 1973 .

[16]  M. Just,et al.  Cognitive processes in comprehension , 1977 .

[17]  W Kintsch,et al.  Children's comprehension and memory for stories. , 1979, Journal of experimental child psychology.

[18]  W. Kintsch,et al.  The representation of meaning in memory , 1974 .

[19]  S. Jay Samuels,et al.  Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading , 1974 .

[20]  Allan Collins,et al.  A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing , 1975 .

[21]  Thomas G. Sticht,et al.  Applications of the Audread Model to Reading Evaluation and Instruction. , 1976 .

[22]  D. Bobrow,et al.  Representation and Understanding: Studies in Cognitive Science , 1975 .

[23]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  A framework for representing knowledge" in the psychology of computer vision , 1975 .

[24]  Richard C. Atkinson,et al.  Human Memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes , 1968, Psychology of Learning and Motivation.

[25]  Charles A. Perfetti,et al.  Coding and Comprehension in Skilled Reading and Implications for Reading Instruction. , 1977 .

[26]  John R. Anderson.  Language, Memory, and Thought , 1976 .

[27]  Stephen H. Levinsohn,et al.  Field Analysis Of Discourse , 1978 .

[28]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Reading rate and retention as a function of the number of propositions in the base structure of sentences , 1973 .

[29]  N. Stein,et al.  An Analysis of Story Comprehension in Elementary School Children: A Test of a Schema. , 1975 .

[30]  W. Kintsch,et al.  Summarizing scrambled stories , 1977, Memory & cognition.

[31]  M. Halliday.  NOTES ON TRANSITIVITY AND THEME IN ENGLISH. PART 2 , 1967 .

[32]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Comprehension and recall of text as a function of content variables , 1975 .

[33]  H. H. Clark,et al.  What's new? Acquiring New information as a process in comprehension , 1974 .

[34]  V. Dijk.  Recalling and Summarizing Complex Discourse , 1979 .

[35]  R. C. Atkinson,et al.  HUMAN MEMORY: A PROPOSED SYSTEM AND ITS CONTROL PROCESSES1 , 1977 .

[36]  Donald A. Norman,et al.  Explorations in Cognition , 1975 .

[37]  R. Jarvella.  Syntactic processing of connected speech , 1971 .

[38]  Marvin Minsky,et al.  A framework for representing knowledge , 1974 .

[39]  V. Dijk,et al.  Context and cognition: Knowledge frames and speech act comprehension , 1977 .

[40]  D. Rumelhart.  NOTES ON A SCHEMA FOR STORIES , 1975 .

[41]  W. Kintsch,et al.  The role of culture‐specific schemata in the comprehension and recall of stories∗ , 1978 .

[42]  Teun A. van Dijk,et al.  Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse , 1977 .

[43]  Teun A. van Dijk,et al.  Text Grammar and Text Logic , 1973 .

[44]  Doris Aaronson,et al.  Performance theories for sentence coding: Some quantitative models , 1977 .

[45]  Eugene Charniak.  Framed PAINTING: The Representation of a Common Sense Knowledge Fragment , 1977 .

[46]  V. Dijk,et al.  Philosophy of action and theory of narrative , 1976 .

[47]  Walter Kintsch,et al.  Summarizing Stories After Reading and Listening. , 1977 .

[48]  Joe L. Lewis,et al.  What does it mean to be high verbal? , 1975, Cognitive Psychology.