Coherence Threshold and the Continuity of Processing: The RI-Val Model of Comprehension

Cognitive Processes in Discourse Comprehension: Passive Processes, Reader-Initiated Processes, and Evolving Mental Representations

“…A related question is whether information activated through reader-initiated processes triggers new waves of passive processes, for example, because the activated information initiates its own spread of activation. Answering these questions involves detailed modeling and investigation of the relation between passive and reader-initiated processes (e.g., issues concerning validation; Isberner & Richter, 2014;O'Brien & Cook, 2016;Singer, 2013).…”

“…As a second example, a considerable body of research on passive processes uses behavioral measures that presume coherence-building processes. For instance, studies on text factors that are hypothesized to influence passive processes frequently use the contradiction paradigm (Albrecht & O'Brien, 1993;O'Brien & Cook, 2016;in children: Helder, Van Leijenhorst, & van den Broek, 2016;Wassenburg, Beker, van den Broek, & van der Schoot, 2015;Zabrucky & Ratner, 1992). In this paradigm, participants read texts with target sentences that contradict earlier text statements.…”

“…Passive processes are captured in fairly detailed models, which specify various factors that influence the availability of information from memory through passive processes. These factors include the amount of elaboration or strength of encoding of the information in memory, the degree of activation of the triggering information in the current text element, and the strength of association between triggering and memory information (O'Brien & Cook, 2016;O'Brien, Rizzella, Albrecht, & Halleran, 1998;Ratcliff and McKoon 1988;.…”

Expectation-based Comprehension: Modeling the Interaction of World Knowledge and Linguistic Experience

“…Within the RI-Val model of comprehension, Cook and O'Brien (2014) take validation to be one of the three central processes of comprehension (together with activation/resonance and integration). These processes are assumed to operate in a parallel but asynchronous manner; validation starts only after the process of integration has begun (see also O'Brien & Cook, 2016). Based on a range of empirical findings, Richter (2015) argues that validation is perhaps even more closely interwoven with integration, 3 These surprisal values are calculated for the depicted word-by-word transitions, and they may differ slightly from the averaged surprisal values shown in Figure 10.…”

“…On the empirical front, a wide range of findings has shown that the processing difficulty of individual words is affected by the larger discourse context and general knowledge about the world, above and beyond linguistic experience alone (see, e.g., Albrecht & O'Brien, 1993;Altmann & Kamide, 1999;Camblin, Gordon, & Swaab, 2007;Cook & Myers, 2004;Garrod & Terras, 2000;Hess, Foss, & Carroll, 1995;Knoeferle, Crocker, Scheepers, & Pickering, 2005;Knoeferle, Habets, Crocker, & Münte, 2008;Kuperberg, Paczynski, & Ditman, 2011;Morris, 1994;Myers & O'Brien, 1998;O'Brien & Albrecht, 1992;Otten & van Berkum, 2008;van Berkum, Brown, Zwitserlood, Kooijman, & Hagoort, 2005; van Berkum, Hagoort, & Brown, 1999;van Berkum, Zwitserlood, Hagoort, & Brown, 2003). As such, recent theories of text comprehension have emphasized the importance of world knowledge on incremental comprehension by arguing that the validation of message consistency is a central part of the comprehension process (Cook & O'Brien, 2014;Isberner & Richter, 2014;O'Brien & Cook, 2016;Richter, 2015;Singer, 2006Singer, , 2013Singer & Doering, 2014).…”