How Robust Is Discourse Processing for Native Readers? The Role of Connectives and the Coherence Relations They Convey

Abstract

While corpus studies have shown that discourse connectives that convey the same coherence relation can display subtle differences, research on online discourse processing has only focused on a rather limited set of connectives. Yet, different connectives – for example, rare or polyfunctional ones – might elicit different reading patterns. In order to explore this assumption, we test the robustness of discourse processing for French native speakers by measuring the way they process causal and concessive sentences that are conveyed by either an appropriate or inappropriate connective. Throughout three experiments, we change important characteristics of the connectives: we first test frequently used connectives (Experiment 1), secondly less frequent ones (Experiment 2), and finally less frequent connectives that are polyfunctional and for which different functions clearly compete (Experiment 3). Our results show that the processing for incoherent items was affected for all connectives, however readers showed altered reading fluency when infrequent connectives were used. We conclude that discourse processing is quite robust and that readers are able to insert meaning conveyed by rare connectives while still showing the highest reading ease with frequent connectives.

Reading Argumentative Texts: Effects of the Presence-Absence of Connectives in Reading Comprehension and Cognitive Effort

“…The findings in this study are contrary to our hypothesis; we expected a differentiated performance in reading comprehension by participants reading texts with connectors versus texts without connectors which was observed in studies with other methodologies (Wetzel et al, 2022). The performance of participants in the reading comprehension assessment did not show differences between the text ©2022 Colegio de Profesionales en Psicología de Costa Rica http://www.rcps-cr.org conditions.…”

5 Do non-native readers rely on connectives? The processing of coherence relations in L2

“…For example, in the case of a wrong use of a connective, non-native readers might not be able to easily draw alternative coherent interpretations. To address this question, we assessed in the following experiment whether incoherence due to incorrectly used connectives affects the reading fluency of non-native readers of French, and compared it to the data collected in Wetzel et al (2022) for the same experiment on L1 readers.…”

“…We created 40 experimental and 45 filler items, based on the items used by Wetzel, Zufferey and Gygax (2022). More precisely, we took the correct versions of concessions and causes of Wetzel et al's first experiment in order to obtain explicitly marked causes and concessions (example 2 and 3).…”

“…Thus, participants were obliged to read attentively all parts of the sentences, as they could not guess which part of the sentence the question would address. As these questions functioned as wrap-up segments of the preceding sentence, recording response times enabled us to observe potential spill-over effects of the reading fluency (as in Wetzel et al, 2022;Crible et al, 2021). In addition, based on the response given to the question, we excluded participants who did not truly read the sentences (at a threshold of 75% of correct answers).…”

“…In order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the processing of coherence relations in L2, and to assess the potential benefit that connectives can bring to L2 reading, we present two experiments, based on the work of Recio Fernández (2020) and Wetzel et al (2022), which will enable us to answer the following research questions: a) To what extent do non-native readers of French benefit from the presence of discourse connectives while reading? b) In the case of a wrongly used connective, do non-native readers still rely on the connective?…”