Encoding processes and the recall of text

Two experiments investigated the proposition that the amount of cognitive effort expended to encode information will be directly related to recall of that information. While previous research has shown that amount of processing may affect recall, these studies have generally drawn on the notion of an elaborated memory representation to explain their results. In this study, the amount of processing required to correctly interpret anaphoric relations was varied while the elaboration of the memory trace was held constant. These experiments employed a self-paced reading paradigm in which subjects read a series of short paragraphs and later were cued to recall the final sentence of each paragraph. It was found that recall was significantly improved when more processing was required to correctly interpret the anaphoric relationship expressed in the final sentence. These findings suggest that encoding processes can affect recall performance without elaboration of the memory representation.     

Reading and visual memory: remembering scenes that were never seen.

In Experiment 1 (N = 16), under conditions of high memory load (60 pictures and 50 paragraphs) and a 1-week retention interval, undergraduate subjects reported their memory for photographs of scenes (cued recall and free-recall tasks). Subjects frequently reported memory for photographs that they had actually never seen, but had read about in a brief paragraph. In Experiment 2 (N = 40), the same pattern of results was obtained with immediate testing. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that the likelihood of subjects falsely attributing scene memory (based on reading) to actually having viewed a photograph was reduced when metacognitive awareness of imaging during reading was made salient. Awareness of image creation was induced by requiring subjects to rate the paragraphs with respect to imagery vividness. Although other measures of memory remained the same, subjects in the induced-imagery condition made 50% fewer confusion errors than subjects who read the paragraphs without imagery instructions. The results are discussed in the context of Johnson and Raye's (1981) reality monitoring model.     

Global context effects on processing lexically ambiguous words: Evidence from eye fixations

Readers' eye movements were monitored as they read biased ambiguous target words in the context of a short paragraph. Two aspects of context were manipulated. The global context was presented in the topic sentence of the paragraph and instantiated either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of biased ambiguous target words (those with highly dominant meanings). Local contextual information either preceded or followed the target word and was always consistent with the subordinate interpretation. Consistent with prior research, we obtained a subordinate bias effect wherein readers looked longer at the ambiguous words than control words when the preceding context instantiated the subordinate meaning. More importantly, the magnitude of the subordinate bias effect was the same when global context alone, local context alone, or local and global context combined were consistent with the subordinate meaning of the ambiguous word. The results of this study indicate that global contextual information (1) has an immediate impact on lexical ambiguity resolution when no local disambiguating information is available, (2) has no additional effect when it is consistent with local information, but (3) does have a slightly delayed effect when inconsistent with local information.     

Accessing lexical ambiguities during sentence comprehension: Effects of frequency of meaning and contextual bias

Two hypotheses concerning the nature of lexical access, the exhaustive access and the terminating ordered search hypotheses, were examined in two separate studies using a crossmodal lexical priming task. In this task, subjects listened to sentences that were biased toward either the primary interpretation (a meaning occurring 75% or more of the time) or a secondary interpretation (a meaning occurring less than 25% of the time) of a lexical ambiguity that occurred in each sentence. Simultaneously, subjects made lexical decisions about visually presented words. Decisions to words related to both the primary and secondary meanings of the ambiguity were facilitated when presented immediately following occurrence of the ambiguity in the sentence. This effect held under each of the two biasing context conditions. However, when they were presented 1.5 sec following occurrence of the ambiguity, only visual words related to the contextually relevant meaning of the ambiguity were facilitated. These results support the exhaustive access hypothesis. It is argued that lexical access is an autonomous subsystem of the sentence comprehension routine in which all meanings of a word are momentarily accessed, regardless of the factors of contextual bias or bias associated with frequency of use.     

The relationship between age, processing speed, working memory capacity, and language comprehension

A total of 50 elderly individuals and 48 college students were tested on several measures of processing speed and of working memory capacity. Language processing was tested with an on-line measure of sentence processing efficiency, an end-of-sentence acceptability judgement task, and a paragraph comprehension test. Elderly individuals performed more poorly than college students on the speed of processing and working memory measures and had longer listening times overall on the sentence processing measures. Elderly individuals did not, however, have overall longer listening times at the most capacity-demanding regions of the harder sentence types. Correlational analyses failed to establish a relationship between the increase in syntactic processing load at the capacity-demanding region of the harder sentence type and the measures of working memory capacity, but did establish a relationship between paragraph comprehension and working memory capacity. The data are argued to provide evidence that the WM system used to structure sentences syntactically is separate from that used in other aspects of language comprehension.     

The influence of global discourse on lexical ambiguity resolution

The influence of global discourse on the resolution of lexical ambiguity was examined in a series of naming experiments. Two-sentence passages were constructed to bias either the dominant or the subordinate meaning of a homonym that was embedded in a locally ambiguous sentence. The results provided evidence for the immediate (0-msec interstimulus interval) resolution of lexical ambiguity and were subsequently replicated in Experiment 2, in which an 80-msec stimulus onset asynchrony exposure duration was employed for the homonyms. Strong dominant and subordinate biased discourse contexts activated only the contextually appropriate sense of a homonym. In Experiment 3, each sentence of the discourse was presented in isolation. The pattern of activation obtained in Experiments 1 and 2 was found to be contingent on the integration of the two sentences to construct an overall global discourse representation of the text. The results support a context-sensitive model of lexical ambiguity resolution.     

The relationship between age,processing speed,working memory capacity,and language comprehension

A total of 50 elderly individuals and 48 college students were tested on several measures of processing speed and of working memory capacity. Language processing was tested with an on‐line measure of sentence processing efficiency, an end‐of‐sentence acceptability judgement task, and a paragraph comprehension test. Elderly individuals performed more poorly than college students on the speed of processing and working memory measures and had longer listening times overall on the sentence processing measures. Elderly individuals did not, however, have overall longer listening times at the most capacity‐demanding regions of the harder sentence types. Correlational analyses failed to establish a relationship between the increase in syntactic processing load at the capacity‐demanding region of the harder sentence type and the measures of working memory capacity, but did establish a relationship between paragraph comprehension and working memory capacity. The data are argued to provide evidence that the WM system used to structure sentences syntactically is separate from that used in other aspects of language comprehension.     

Comprehension of main ideas and details in coherent and noncoherent discourse by aphasic and nonaphasic listeners

Aphasic and nonaphasic listeners' comprehension of main ideas and details within coherent and noncoherent narrative discourse was examined. Coherent paragraphs contained one topic to which all sentences in the paragraph related. Noncoherent paragraphs contained a change in topic with every third or fourth sentence. Each paragraph contained four main ideas and one or more details that related to each main idea. Listeners' responses to yes/no questions following each paragraph yielded the following results: (1) Nonaphasic listeners comprehended the paragraphs better than aphasic listeners. (2) Both aphasic and nonaphasic listeners comprehended main ideas better than they comprehended details. (3) Coherence did not affect comprehension of main ideas for either group. (4) Coherence did not affect comprehension of details by nonaphasic subjects. (5) Coherence affected comprehension of details by aphasic subjects, and their comprehension of details in coherent paragraphs was worse than their comprehension of details in noncoherent paragraphs. There was no significant correlation between Token Test scores and measures of paragraph comprehension.     

The given-new strategy of comprehension and some natural expository paragraphs

Three experiments tested whether Clark and Haviland's given-new strategy operates in the processing and retention of natural expository paragraphs read as wholes. The first indicated that a paragraph that facilitates the given-new strategy is easier to process than a paragraph that has the same truth value but that frustrates the given-new strategy. The second indicated that a facilitating paragraph has advantages in memory over its variant. And the third both largely confirmed the findings of the second test and suggested that subjects add new information to the memory node holding the given information. Therefore, these experiments extend the tested applicability of the given-new strategy to the readability and retention of some natural expository paragraphs.     

Perceptual representation as a mechanism of lexical ambiguity resolution: An investigation of span and processing time

In 2 experiments, the authors investigated the ability of high- and low-span comprehenders to construe subtle shades of meaning through perceptual representation. High- and low-span comprehenders responded to pictures that either matched or mismatched a target object's shape as implied by the preceding sentence context. At 750 ms after hearing the sentence describing the target object, both high- and low-span comprehenders had activated a contextually appropriate perceptual representation of the target object. However, only high-span comprehenders had perceptually represented the contextually appropriate meaning immediately upon hearing the sentence, whereas low-span comprehenders required more processing time before the perceptual representation was activated. The results are interpreted in a framework of co-occurring lexical representations and perceptual-motor representations.     

Rapid extraction of gist from visual text and its influence on word recognition

Two experiments explored rapid extraction of gist from a visual text and its influence on word recognition. In both, a short text (sentence) containing a target word was presented for 200 ms and was followed by a target recognition task. Results showed that participants recognized contextually anomalous word targets less frequently than contextually consistent counterparts (Experiment 1). This context effect was obtained when sentences contained the same semantic content but with disrupted syntactic structure (Experiment 2). Results demonstrate that words in a briefly presented visual sentence are processed in parallel and that rapid extraction of sentence gist relies on a primitive representation of sentence context (termed protocontext) that is semantically activated by the simultaneous presentation of multiple words (i.e., a sentence) before syntactic processing.     

Show me the meaning! The contextual relevance of images influences the recall and understanding of multimedia RSVP paragraphs

ABSTRACT

This study examined whether images facilitate contextual grouping as effectively as words. College students (N?=?102) read RSVP paragraphs with topics located at the beginning, middle, or end of the paragraph. Paragraph topic was presented as a topic-related image, topic-unrelated image, or written explicitly in text. Topic identification was equally accurate for topic-related images and topic sentences, and less accurate for unrelated images. Paragraphs from the text condition were recalled more accurately than the related and unrelated image conditions. Further, recognition of unrelated images was a positive predictor of the number of logical errors committed during recall. Therefore, related images did not improve memory and comprehension as much as text, and paragraphs with unrelated images negatively affected understanding of the meaning of the paragraph, but not recall. These findings have implications for multimedia information sources such as textbooks or articles that use images to clarify the meaning of the material.     

Learning to ignore distracters

Eye tracking has indicated that older and young adults process distracters similarly when reading single sentences. The present study extended this approach by presenting short paragraphs, sentence by sentence. Eye tracking measures included reading times per word, and the duration of the first fixation and total fixations to the distracters and target words. Comprehension was tested following each paragraph, and recognition of distracters and target words was assessed. The results indicated that young adults were able to learn to ignore the distracters as they read through the paragraphs, whereas older adults were less successful at learning to ignore the distracters.     

Imagery effects and semantic similarity in sentence recognition memory

The idea that subjects often use imagery to discriminate semantically similar sentences was tested in three experiments. In the first experiment, subjects heard subject-verb-object sentences in the context of either a comprehension task or an image-generation task. Their memory for the sentences was tested using a two-alternative forced-choice recognition test in which different types of distractor sentence were used. A sentence semantically similar to the target sentence was one type; a sentence with the same subject and object nouns as the target sentence, but dissimilar in meaning, was another type; and a sentence similar in meaning to one of the stimulus sentences, but not to the target sentence, was a third type. The results showed that the image-generation instructions enhanced later recognition performance, but only for semantically similar test items. A second experiment showed that this finding only holds for high-imagery sentences containing concrete noun concepts. A third experiment demonstrated that the enhanced recognition performance could not be accounted for in terms of a semantic model of test-item discrimination. Collectively, the results were interpreted as providing evidence for the notion that subjects discriminate the semantically similar test items by elaborating the sentence encoding through image processing.     

The role of the verb in sentence memory

Investigators have frequently found that nouns are more important than verbs in the memory representation of sentences. This pattern of results is incompatible with recent theories of sentence memory that have emphasized the verb and with the results of sentence comprehension studies that have demonstrated the importance of the verb. The four experiments reported here were designed to reexamine the role of the verb in sentence memory. Linguistic variables other than sentence function were held constant in three studies. Verbs were recalled as well and were as effective retrieval cues as nouns in these experiments. The to-be-remembered sentences were presented in the context of paragraphs in the fourth experiment. This reduced the difference in level of recall between subjects, verbs, and objects. The conclusion was drawn that the verb is no less important than sentence nouns in the memory representation.     

Semantic context effects and priming in word association

Two experiments investigated priming in word association, an implicit memory task. In the study phase of Experiment 1, semantically ambiguous target words were presented in sentences that biased their interpretation. The appropriate interpretation of the target was either congruent or incongruent with the cue presented in a subsequent word association task. Priming (i.e., a higher proportion of target responses relative to a nonstudied baseline) was obtained for the congruent condition, but not for the incongruent condition. In Experiment 2, study sentences emphasized particular meaning aspects of nonambiguous targets. The word association task showed a higher proportion of target responses for targets studied in the more congruent sentence context than for targets studied in the less congruent sentence context. These results indicate that priming in word association depends largely on the storage of information relating the cue and target.     

Comprehension of directly and indirectly stated main ideas and details in discourse by brain-damaged and non-brain-damaged listeners

Aphasic, right-hemisphere-damaged, and non-brain-damaged subjects heard short narrative paragraphs. Each paragraph contained four main ideas and one or more details related to each main idea. After each paragraph was presented, subjects' comprehension and retention of main ideas and details from the paragraph were tested. Some of the test items directly restated information from paragraphs and others paraphrased information from paragraphs. All groups of subjects remembered main ideas better than they remembered details, and no group of subjects was significantly affected by whether test items directly or indirectly stated information from paragraphs. Disfluent aphasic and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects' overall paragraphs comprehension scores were not significantly poorer than those of non-brain-damaged subjects. Fluent and mixed aphasic subjects' overall paragraph comprehension scores were significantly worse than those of non-brain-damaged and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects. Token Test and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination auditory comprehension scores did not predict aphasic subjects' paragraph comprehension scores. right-hemisphere-damaged subjects' overall paragraph comprehension scores were not significantly those of non-brain-damaged and right-hemisphere-damaged subjects. Token Test and Boston Diagnostic Aphasia Examination auditory comprehension scores did not predict aphasic subjects' paragraph comprehension scores.     

Or cues knowledge of alternatives: Evidence from priming

Recent research has determined that word meanings can instantly influence the meaning and distribution of other words in the sentence. Here, we manipulated basic carrier sentences with the disjunction or linking two nouns that were either filling the same thematic role or not, and were either semantically related or not. Though previous research has shown that one word can prime a semantically related word even in a sentential context, we predicted that if or cues knowledge about contextually‐relevant alternatives, priming for semantic relatives will only obtain when those words also fill the same thematic role. These predictions were confirmed, as self‐paced reading times of the second alternative in the sentence were faster only when the two alternatives shared the same thematic role and semantic category, suggesting that disjunction words like or function similarly to verbs, which cue knowledge about expected argument structure and sense depending on sentential context. The relevance of these findings for basic reasoning phenomena (i.e., the subadditivity effect) is also discussed.     

On catching on to idiomatic expressions

These experiments concern the comprehension of idiomatic expressions. The hypothesis was that there are distinct idiomatic and literal modes of processing sentences. In two experiments, 414 undergraduates read a series of sentences containing either literal or idiomatic ambiguities and then a test which had both a literal and an idiomatic meaning. Ss recorded, which meaning they perceived first. Taken together, the experiments indicate that inducing a set to perceive idioms can increase the proportion of people seeing the idiomatic meaning of test sentence first and a set to perceive literal meanings can reduce this proportion compared to a no-set baseline. Since the procedures to induce set did not involve grammatical or semantic information relevant to comprehension of the test sentence, these results suggest the existence of distinct literal and idiomatic processing strategies.