Discourse;
- What is discourse?
- “a connected series of utterances; a text or conversation”
- “a unit of language longer than a single sentence”
- Definition applies to both spoken words and text
- E.g., Books, speeches, conversations, films
- Key to discourse comprehension is to construct meaning beyond single sentence
comprehension, integrate information across sentences, and draw appropriate
inferences
How do we mentally represent meaning at discourse level;
- Construction Integration Model (Kintsch, 1988)
- Cyclical process as each new proposition is constructed
and integrated
-
Surface form;
- The exact words and syntax of a proposition
- Least abstract level of representation
- E.g., “John wrote Sarah a love letter.” is mentally represented as “John wrote Sarah a
love letter.”
- Short term memory of surface form decays quickly (remember Working Memory
holds ~7 chunks of information)
- New propositions quickly overwrite older propositions
- A typical novel is around 100,000 words – clearly we don’t remember them all but
we do remember “the story”!
Text base;
- Stripped down version of propositions (gist)
- Loses some aspects of the surface form but preserves semantic meaning
- Represented as a predicate (verb) + arguments (i.e., subject, object and theme)
propositions
- “John wrote Sarah a love letter.”
- = Wrote [John, Sarah, Love letter]
- “A love letter was written to Sarah by John”
- = Wrote [John, Sarah, Love letter]
Situation model;
- A mental model of the situation described by the text
- Most abstract (divorced from surface form) level of representation
- Mental representation combining text base with inferences and world knowledge
Evidence for situation model, Bransford et al., 1972
- Memory for text is organised around meaning, not surface form
- Sentences 1 &2 have the same meaning
- Sentences 3 & 4 have different meanings
- In a recognition memory task participants often mistake
sentence 1 for sentence 2 (and vice versa)
- Participants less likely to mistake sentence 3 for sentence 4
, Why do readers notice situation model anomalies?;
- Resonance model (Cook & O’Brien, 2014)
- A model of memory-based text processing
- Automatic low-level resonance – new concepts immediately activate related
concepts in long term memory and from prior context
- E.g., ‘Piano’ activates concepts such as ‘heavy’, even if this concept is irrelevant
- In previous example ‘vegetarian’ resonates with long term memory and activates
‘does not eat meat’
- ‘Cheeseburger’ resonates with long term memory and activates ‘meat’, ‘meat’
reactivates ‘Mary is a vegetarian’ and the inconsistency is noticed
- Resonance also brings relevant information back into focus e.g., if ‘Mary’ has not
been mentioned for several pages or chapters
Event indexing model;
- The Event Indexing Model is a theory of how people update (rather than create)
situation models
Five indices are tracked in the situation model;
- 1) Protagonist (Character) – Stewart, Haigh and Kidd, (2009)
- 2) Temporality (Time) – Zwaan (1996)
- 3) Intentionality (goals and motivations)
- Intentionality index keeps track of goals and plans
- “Betty decided to knit a sweater” introduces a goal
- Probe task shows that goal related information is more accessible (read faster) when
a goal is still unfulfilled and active relative to when the goal has been fulfilled (Suh &
Trabasso, 1993)
- Incomplete goals stay at forefront of reader’s mind, completed goals are
backgrounded
- 4) Spatial (Space) - Stewart, Haigh & Kidd, (2009)
- 5) Causality - Keenan et al., 1984
- E.g if a character moves to a different location, the Space index needs to be updated.
- If there is a time shift, the Temporality index needs to be updated e.g., “The next
day…”; “Twenty minutes later…”
- Anomalies are detected when incoming information mismatches one or more of the
indices
Discourse summary;
- Efficient discourse comprehension requires us to build and
update situation models
- Situation models are based on the literal linguistic input (text or
speech) translated into the gist and augmented with inferences
- Situation models help keep track of five key dimensions
- Lots of unknowns; Do we integrate information into the
situation model proposition by proposition or word by word?
- Other possible dimensions/indexes of the Event Indexing Model? How could they be
tested?
- What are the mechanisms for extracting gist (text base) from the surface form and
then integrating this into a situation model?
Voordelen van het kopen van samenvattingen bij Stuvia op een rij:
Verzekerd van kwaliteit door reviews
Stuvia-klanten hebben meer dan 700.000 samenvattingen beoordeeld. Zo weet je zeker dat je de beste documenten koopt!
Snel en makkelijk kopen
Je betaalt supersnel en eenmalig met iDeal, creditcard of Stuvia-tegoed voor de samenvatting. Zonder lidmaatschap.
Focus op de essentie
Samenvattingen worden geschreven voor en door anderen. Daarom zijn de samenvattingen altijd betrouwbaar en actueel. Zo kom je snel tot de kern!
Veelgestelde vragen
Wat krijg ik als ik dit document koop?
Je krijgt een PDF, die direct beschikbaar is na je aankoop. Het gekochte document is altijd, overal en oneindig toegankelijk via je profiel.
Tevredenheidsgarantie: hoe werkt dat?
Onze tevredenheidsgarantie zorgt ervoor dat je altijd een studiedocument vindt dat goed bij je past. Je vult een formulier in en onze klantenservice regelt de rest.
Van wie koop ik deze samenvatting?
Stuvia is een marktplaats, je koop dit document dus niet van ons, maar van verkoper hannahnewton21. Stuvia faciliteert de betaling aan de verkoper.
Zit ik meteen vast aan een abonnement?
Nee, je koopt alleen deze samenvatting voor €6,33. Je zit daarna nergens aan vast.