Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse

Thorndyke, Perry W.

doi:10.1016/0010-0285(77)90005-6

Cited by 1,206 publications

(703 citation statements)

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“…First, it provided a more valid test of the integration hypothesis because unlike lists of isolated or seemingly unrelated sentences, stories composed of scrambled sentences possess a theme. With appropriate instructions, subjects do attempt to obtain the gist of scrambled stories, and they meet with some success -though less than with unscrambled (normal) ones Kieras, 1978Kieras, , 1981Kintsch, Mandel, & Kozminsky, 1977;Mandler, 1978;Schwartz & Flammer, 1981;Stein & Glenn, 1979;Thorndyke, 1977). Indeed, the probability of integration is lowered simply by separating what should ordinarily be consecutive units (Frase, 1975;Hayes-Roth & Thorndyke, 1979;Moeser, 1977Moeser, , 1979Walker & Meyer, 1980).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, many have suggested that the plot, the event sequence of a narrative, is usually characterized by another structural specification: The events of a story can be logically partitioned into cohesive "subepisodes" or constituents Kintsch, 1977;Haberlandt, 1980Haberlandt, , 1984Mandler & Johnson, 1977;Meyer, 1975;Rumelhart, 1977;Thorndyke, 1977). 2 Note, however, that not all theorists have endorsed this proposal (e.g., Black & Wilensky, 1979).…”

Section: Surface Information Loss and Constituent Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

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Surface information loss in comprehension

Gernsbacher

1985

Cognitive Psychology

229

185

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Shortly after a sentence has been comprehended, information about its exact surface form (e.g., its word order) becomes less available. The present research demonstrated this phenomenon during the comprehension of nonverbal stimuli (picture stories). In Experiment 1, significantly more surface (left/right orientation) information was lost after comprehending several picture stories than just one; in Experiment 2, more was lost after comprehending an entire picture story than half of one. In Experiment 3, subjects segmented the picture stories into their constituents; in Experiment 4, significantly more surface information was lost after crossing these constituents' boundaries than before. The present research also investigated why surface information is lost. Four explanations were considered: Surface information loss is the result of performing grammatical transformations (the linguistic hypothesis), exceeding short-term memory limitations (the memory limitations hypothesis), integrating information into gist (the integration hypothesis), shifting from building one substructure to initiating another (the processing shift hypothesis). The linguistic and memory limitations hypotheses were considered inadequate; the integration and the processing shift hypotheses were tested in the last set of experiments. In Experiment 5 (using nonverbal stimuli), the predictions made by the processing shift hypothesis were confirmed; in Experiment 6 (using verbal stimuli), these results were replicated. Other implications of the processing shift hypothesis concerning surface information loss are discussed.A well-known phenomenon involved in language comprehension is this: Shortly after a passage is comprehended, information about the exact surface form of its sentences (e.g., their word order) becomes less available. By far the most cited demonstration of this phenomenon is Sachs ' (1967). Her subjects listened to a narrative story that included a sentence such as 1. He sent a letter about it to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.After comprehending this sentence, subjects decided whether it or Sentence 2 was the sentence they just heard. 2A letter about it was sent to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.If subjects were tested immediately after hearing the target sentence, their ability to discriminate between it and its reversed form was around 90%. However, if they were tested after comprehending only 80 additional syllables, performance fell to just above chance.Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. M. A. Gernsbacher,

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Surface Information Loss and Constituent Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

Surface information loss in comprehension

Gernsbacher

1985

Cognitive Psychology

229

185

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“…A related line of memory research has addressed the human knowledge structures that guide the encoding and parsing of simple narrative stores (Kintsch, 1977;Kintsch & van Dijk, 1975;Mandler, 1978;Mandler & Johnson, 1977;Rumelhart, 1975Rumelhart, , 1977; Thorndyke, 1977Thorndyke, , 1978. This work has modified Bartlett's (1932) notion of a memory schema to characterize the knowledge of narrative structure that people use during comprehension and retrieval of stories.…”

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confidence: 99%

An evaluation of alternative functional models of narrative schemata

Yekovich

Thorndyke

1981

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

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“…Nous mettons à part, dans le cadre de cette étude, le cas des grammaires du conte qui ont été l'objet d'études abondantes depuis la première édition (russe) de Morphologie du conte de Propp (1928), en passant par le structuralisme français (Bremond, 1973;Greimas, 1966Greimas, , 1970 et jusqu'aux recherches américaines entreprises plus récemment par Rumelhart (1977), Thorndyke (1977), Mandler et Johnson (1977) et Mandler (1978 2 . Nous nous limiterons ici aux auteurs qui ont mis au point des modèles susceptibles de s'appliquer à une grande variété de textes recouvrant, en particulier, les textes que nous appelons documentaires 3 .…”

Section: La Rechercheunclassified

“…Cet impact a été vérifié par diverses expérimentations dont les résultats peuvent se ramener à ce qui suit : -Le lecteur retient plus facilement les propositions qui se situent à un niveau supérieur dans la structure du texte (Meyer 1975;Kintsch 1977;Thorndyke 1977). …”

Section: Bilan Sommaire Des Recherchesunclassified

L’utilisation de la structure textuelle pour la lecture des textes documentaires au primaire

Boyer

2009

rse

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RésuméL’auteur met en relation la situation de la didactique de la lecture et l’état de la recherche américaine sur la structure des textes non narratifs. Il en ressort que la connaissance et l’utilisation de la structure générale d’un texte semblent jouer un rôle significatif dans la compréhension en lecture. Suit un exposé des procédés et techniques expérimentés jusqu’à ce jour en vue de vérifier l’efficacité en salle de classe des modèles de lecture et des taxonomies textuelles élaborées par les psychologues et les linguistes.

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Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse

Cited by 1,206 publications

References 12 publications

Surface information loss in comprehension

Surface information loss in comprehension

An evaluation of alternative functional models of narrative schemata

L’utilisation de la structure textuelle pour la lecture des textes documentaires au primaire

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