Constructive processes in simple linear-order problems.

Foos, Paul W.; Smith, Kirk H.; Sabol, Mark A.; Mynatt, Barbee T.

doi:10.1037/0278-7393.2.6.759

Cited by 43 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Examination of the recall data in Smith and Foos (1975) and Foos et al (1976) shows that the linear order equivalent of our canonical organization gives higher recall than any of the other orders. Linear orders that correspond to our backward and flashback organizations show roughly equivalent recall.…”

Section: Linear Ordering and Discourse Organizationmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Within this literature, there is one set of studies that seems to tap many of the same psychological processes as the experiment in this article. These experiments used an arbitrary underlying linear ordering (as in the previous example) and studied all possible orderings of the three pairs (Foos, Smith, Sabol, & Mynatt, 1976;Smith & Foos, 1975). Thus, if this example is represented as AB, BC, CD, then this ordering of the three pairs is equivalent to our canonical discourse organization.…”

Section: Linear Ordering and Discourse Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Discourse organization in the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts

Ohtsuka

Brewer

1992

Discourse Processes

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We investigated the role of global discourse organization on the comprehension of temporal order in narrative. We proposed three principles of discourse organization: (a) the immediate integration principle-a new event should be integrated immediately with old information, (b) the consistency principle-a new event should be attached to a consistent locus, and (c) the isomorphism principlediscourse structure should match event structure. Five passages varying in discourse structure were presented auditorily, and the comprehension of the underlying event order was tested. Subjects' comprehension was best in the canonical passage. The backward, flashback, and embedded passages were significantly more difficult than the canonical passages. The flashforward passage was the most difficult. The results were interpreted as showing that the immediate integration principle is a strong component of comprehension of temporal order and that the isomorphism principle contributes to text comprehension, but to a lesser degree.The purpose of the present experiment is to investigate the role of global discourse organization on the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts using experimental narratives in which discourse order and event order were not confounded. To study global discourse structure, we believe that it is necessary to make a clear distinction between the events in the underlying event world and the linguistic representation of these events in a narrative text. The organization of the events in the underlying event world will be referred to as the event structure (E-1, E-2, E-3, etc.), and the temporal arrangements of these events in the text will be referred to as the discourse structure (e-1, e-2, e-3, etc.). For example, given an underlying event sequence such as, 1 APA reference to the published article is: Ohtsuka, K., & Brewer, W. F. (1992). Discourse organization in the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts. Discourse Processes, 15, 317-336. 2 We would like to thank Ed Lichtenstein, Nelson Skinner, and Jim Treyens for help with some preliminary experiments on text organization, and Marlene Schommer for preparing the tape recordings for the experiment. In addition, we would like to thank Ellen Brewer, Tricia Tenpenny, and Jane Zbrodoff for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

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Section: Linear Ordering and Discourse Organizationmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Linear Ordering and Discourse Organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse organization in the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts

Ohtsuka

Brewer

1992

Discourse Processes

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“…On the other hand, linear orderings are generally presented in a sequential order. Foos et al (1976) have shown that it is more difficult for subjects to construct an integrated representation from a nonsequential or "nonmatch" presentation order than from a sequential or "match" presentation order. Thus, it was necessary to rule out this factor in comparing the acquisition of a partial ordering with that of a linear ordering.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…No matter how the items are presented, there must be some adjacently presented pairs that do not contain a common element. Foos, Smith, Sabol, and Mynatt (1976) have demonstrated that it is more difficult to construct an integrated array from a nonsequential or "nonmatch" presentation order than from a sequential or "match" presentation order. Thus, the difficulty in constructing complex partial orderings may arise from the difficulty found in constructing any arrays containing a nonmatch component.…”

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confidence: 99%

Acquiring complex partial orderings in comparison with acquiring similar-sized linear orderings

Moeser

1979

Memory & Cognition

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The acquisition of a 14-term partial ordering was compared with the acquisition of a 14-term linear ordering. Learning the partial ordering was found to be more difficult because of two factors: (1) Subjects do not appear to have in their knowledge systems a prototype or rule for representing a long list of comparative relations as a partial ordering structure, and (2) the partial ordering must be presented so that some of the adjacently presented premises do not contain a common element. When these two factors were controlled, the partial ordering was as easy to learn as the linear ordering. It was also found that subjects learning the partial ordering showed no evidence of a serial position learning curve, whereas subjects learning the linear ordering showed some tendency to produce a serial position learning curve. linear ordering, however, an item can have at most two direct connections to other items, one "greater than" connection and one "less than" connection. Also, in a linear ordering there will always be two items that have only one direct connection to other items in the chain: the two ends of the chain. There have been many investigations of how linear order information is encoded and retrieved. In these studies, subjects are presented a set of propositions that describe a linear ordering of comparative relations. An example of such a set is "Mary is older than Judy, Judy is older than Anne, and Anne is older than Lynn." The information in these sentences can be combined to form a connected chain of premises; namely, "Mary is older than Judy who is older than Anne who is older than Lynn." Most investigations of linear orderings have concluded that subjects encode the information from this type of input into a single integrated construct. One line of evidence used to support this conclusion is the fmding of a serial position learning curve. In learning a set of individual comparisons, subjects make more errors on the pairs in the middle of the ordering than on those at the ends (e.g., Riley & Trabasso, 1974;Trabasso, Riley, & Wilson, 1975). Bower (1971) has argued that such effects are prima facie evidence of an integrated construction.However, the serial position learning curve has not been found with partial orderings of comparative relations. Like linear orderings, partial orderings involve a sequence of linked items that form a connected chain of premises. Unlike linear orderings, the chain involves branches. For example, compare the topographical properties of the simple linear ordering illustrated in Figure la with the partial ordering shown in Figure 1b. Both orderings contain 14 linked items and can be described by a set of 13 comparative premises. In the

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“…The purpose of this manipulation was to prevent the subject from viewing the third pair just long enough to read it and then pressing for the recall signal without engaging in any constructive processes. Under the present procedure, the subjects never knew whether the third pair would be followed by a recall Foos et al (1976). signal or another pair.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 95%

On the time required to construct a simple linear order

Smith

Mynatt

1977

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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Pairs of digits or two-syllable words were presented visually for subjects to study as long as necessary in order to construct a single string reflecting the ordering inherent in the pairs. For example, given 75, 27, 58, the subject was to produce 2758. The time spent studying individual pairs was shown to reflect a set of five constructive processes identified in a theory proposed by Foos, Smith, Sabol, and Mynatt (1976) to account for errors in constructing the correct order. In addition, the results indicate that the time required to determine that a pair contains no elements in common with previously presented pairs is greater for two-syllable words than for digits, suggesting that an exhaustive search through short-term storage is occurring.One of the simplest versions of the linear order task consists of presenting a subject with a set of digit pairs and requesting that he respond with a single string of digits reflecting the order inherent in the presented pairs. For example, the subject might receive, one at a time, the pairs 72,28,83, and his task would be to write down 7283. A recent study by Foos, Smith, Sabol, and Mynatt (1976) found that the order of presentation of the pairs was a major determinant of success in this task. Subjects were successful 91 % of the time with the presentation order given above, but succeeded only 46% of the time with an order such as 62,34,46. Foos et a1. (1976) explained their results in terms of what they called constructive processes, consisting of sets of mental operations that subjects are assumed to perform on the input strings. A detailed discussion of the various mental operations may also be found in the section by Smith in Potts, Banks, Kosslyn, Moyer, Riley, and Smith (in press). Briefly, the theory asserts that the first pair is stored in a short-term memory buffer and that subsequent pairs are entered following a marker element at the end of the string in the buffer. So, for example, after hearing 91,15, the buffer contains 91-15, where the hyphen (" -") represents the marker. The buffer is continually searched for duplicate, or matching, elements and new strings are constructed in the buffer by bringing duplicate elements together around a marker and deleting both the marker and one of the duplicate elements. Thus, 91-15 would become 915 in the buffer.Five constructive processes varying in difficulty were identified. In increasing order of difficulty, they are, as This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BMS75-19313. The second author is also on the faculty of the University of Toledo. Requests for reprints should be sent to Kirk H. Smith, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio 43403. follows: (1) Process Ml: One matching element is found already arrayed on either side of the marker. Simple deletion operations produce a constructed order. (This process was illustrated above with the pairs 91, 15.) (2) Process M2: One matching element-is found, but a rearrangement is required to bring the ma...

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Constructive processes in simple linear-order problems.

Cited by 43 publications

References 9 publications

Discourse organization in the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts

Discourse organization in the comprehension of temporal order in narrative texts

Acquiring complex partial orderings in comparison with acquiring similar-sized linear orderings

On the time required to construct a simple linear order

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