Assessing text representations with recognition: The interaction of domain knowledge and text coherence

Readers construct at least 2 interrelated mental representations when they comprehend a text: a textbase and a situation model. Two experiments were conducted with recognition memory to examine how domain knowledge and text coherence influence readers' textbase and situation-model representations. In Experiment 1, participants made remember-know judgments to text ideas. Knowledge and coherence interacted to influence remember judgments differently than know judgments. In Experiment 2, the authors used the process-dissociation procedure to obtain recollection and familiarity estimates. Knowledge and coherence interacted to influence recollection estimates but not familiarity estimates. The authors claim that recollection and familiarity can be used as markers of the different processes involved in constructing a textbase and a situation model.