Processing interclausal Relationships

Studies in the Production and Comprehension of Text

Jean Costermans, Michel Fayol

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317779681
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Writing & Presentation Skills

During the last 10 years, more and more linguistic and psycholinguistic research has been devoted to the study of discourse and written texts. Much of this research deals with the markers that underline the connections and the breaks between clauses and sentences plus the use of these markers -- by adults and children -- in the production and comprehension of oral and written material. In this volume, major observations and theoretical views from both sides of the Atlantic are brought together to appeal to a wide range of linguists, psychologists, and speech therapists. The volume presents contributions from researchers interested specifically in adult language and from others concerned with developmental aspects of language. Some contributors deal primarily with production, whereas others concentrate on comprehension. Some direct their attention to oral discourse while others focus on written texts. To preserve overall coherence, however, the contributors were given the following recommendations:
* With regard to the level of linguistic analysis, the emphasis should be on the clause level -- more particularly, on the relationships between clauses.
* Special emphasis should also be placed on linguistic markers (e.g., connectives, markers of segmentation, punctuation).
* An overview of a given field of research should be offered, and current research should be put into perspective.
* For contributors in the developmental field, attention should be paid to the fact that an account of the acquisition of some language functions throughout childhood should be included only if general principles of interclause relations that might be masked by the exclusive examination of adult evidence could be derived from it.

Part I

PROCESSING INTERCLAUSAL RELATIONSHIPS: A MANY-SIDED TOPIC

Part I gathers two chapters, which, due to the complementarity of the topics encountered, give a general overview of the questions considered in this book and the way one can deal with them. Indeed, chapter 1 deals with comprehension by the adult and focuses on the linguistic cues and the previously acquired knowledge used by the subjects to elaborate a mental representation. In contrast, chapter 2 considers the children’s oral production of narratives. Here, the authors evoke the relationships between the story plots and the cohesive devices, but also the constraints affecting the performance.

In chapter 1, Gernsbacher summarizes her model of the general processes implied in text comprehension: the Structure Building Framework. According to this model, comprehension aims at the elaboration of a coherent representation. This elaboration takes place by the setting up of foundations, followed by the development of the mental structures through mapping of the new information with the previous items. Depending on the coherence of the incoming information with the previously established items, either there is a follow up on the building of the ongoing structure or a new structure is initiated. The problem is to determine how the addressee knows whether a new piece of information can and must be put in relation with the one just processed. Two parameters determine the pairing: first, the previous knowledge of the world, which allows the interpretation of what remains implicit, and, second, some linguistic cues that operate as pairing instructions. A series of empirical data is reported illustrating how these two parameters intervene during the elaboration of different types of coherence: referential, temporal, situational, causal, and structural.

In chapter 2, Shapiro and Hudson develop a functional approach to the production of narratives by children. They wonder why canonical narratives are produced at a later stage of development. To account for the difficulties encountered, they consider that children are confronted with two tasks requiring simultaneous treatment: to elaborate a coherent frame and to set up markers ensuring cohesion (e.g., use of subordinate clauses, pronouns, and conjunctions). This hypothesis predicts that, when the task demands become too important to manage both tasks, performance degrades. It also predicts that an alleviation of one of the tasks would lead to an improvement in the text quality. This hypothesis is tested in two experiments during which help is provided: for example, pictures facilitate the production management. The data confirms that this help induces a complexification of the story plots as well as a diversification and an increase in the use of cohesive devices. The authors conclude that the use of interclausal devices vary with the complexity of the frames and with the task demands.

Chapter 1

Coherence Cues Mapping During Comprehension

Morton Ann Gernsbacher

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Language can be viewed as a specialized skill involving language-specific processes and language-specific mechanisms. Another position views language as drawing on general, cognitive processes and mechanisms—processes and mechanisms that underlie nonlinguistic tasks as well. Such a commonality might arise because language comprehension evolved from nonlinguistic cognitive skills (Bates, 1979; Lieberman, 1984), or because the mind is based on a common architecture, such as a connectionist architecture (Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986).

In my research, I have adopted the view that many of the processes and mechanisms involved in language comprehension are general cognitive processes and mechanisms. I have proposed a simple framework, the Structure Building Framework, that identifies a few of those general cognitive processes and mechanisms (Gernsbacher, 1991a, 1996, in press). According to the Structure Building Framework, the goal of comprehension is to build coherent mental representations or structures. At least three component processes are involved. First, comprehenders lay foundations for their mental structures. Next, comprehenders develop mental structures by mapping on new information when that information coheres or relates to previous information. However, when the incoming information is less coherent or related, comprehenders employ a different process: They shift and build a new substructure. Thus, most representations comprise several branching substructures.

The building blocks of these mental structures are memory nodes. Memory nodes are activated by incoming stimuli. Initial activation forms the foundation of mental structures. Once memory nodes are activated, they transmit processing signals to enhance (increase) or suppress (decrease or dampen) other nodes’ activation. Thus, once memory nodes are activated, two mechanisms control their level of activation: suppression and enhancement. Memory nodes are enhanced when the information they represent is necessary for further structure building; they are suppressed when the information they represent is no longer necessary.

Previously, I have empirically explored the three processes involved in structure building: (a) laying a foundation (Carreiras, Gernsbacher, & Villa, 1995; Gernsbacher & Hargreaves, 1988, 1992; Gernsbacher, Hargreaves, & Beeman, 1989); (b) mapping information onto a foundation (Carreiras & Gernsbacher, 1992; Deaton & Gernsbacher, in press; Gernsbacher, 1991b; Gernsbacher, Goldsmith, & Robertson, 1992; Gernsbacher & Robertson, 1992, 1996b; Haenggi, Gernsbacher, & Bolliger, 1993; Haenggi, Kintsch, & Gernsbacher, 1995; Oakhill, Garnham, Gernsbacher, & Cain, 1992); and (c) shifting to build new substructures (Foertsch & Gernsbacher, 1994; Gernsbacher, 1985; Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990).

I have also explored the two mechanisms that control these structure-building processes: suppression and enhancement (Faust & Gernsbacher, 1996; Gernsbacher, 1989, 1993; Gernsbacher & Faust, 1991a, 1991b, 1994; Gernsbacher & Jescheniak, 1995; Gernsbacher & Robertson, 1995; Gernsbacher & Shroyer, 1989). I have found that these general cognitive processes and mechanisms underlie many comprehension phenomena. I have also found that differences in the efficiency of these processes and mechanisms underlie differences in adult comprehension skill (Gernsbacher, 1993; Gernsbacher & Faust, 1991a, 1994; Gernsbacher & Robertson, 1995; Gernsbacher, Varner, & Faust, 1990) and adult written composition skill (Traxler & Gernsbacher, 1992, 1993, 1995).

This chapter focuses on one of the central processes of structure building involved in text and discourse comprehension—the cognitive process of mapping. According to the Structure Building Framework, once comprehenders have laid a foundation for their mental structures, they develop those structures using the cognitive process of mapping. I envision the cognitive process of mapping as similar to creating an object out of papier-mâché. Each strip of papier-mâché is attached to the developing object, augmenting it. Appendages can be built, layer by layer. Comprehenders build mental structures in a similar way. Each piece of incoming information can be mapped onto a developing structure to augment it, and new substructures (like appendages) are built in the same way.

What guides this mapping process? In this chapter, I suggest that comprehenders interpret various cues that the incoming information coheres with the previously comprehended information. Comprehenders interpret these cues as signals or instructions to map the incoming information onto the structure or substructure that they are currently developing. Comprehenders learn the cues of coherence through their experience with the world and their experience with language (Gernsbacher & Givón, 1995).

Some coherence cues are explicitly provided in the text or discourse; for instance, anaphoric pronouns such as she and the definite article the are provided in the text or discourse. Yet, even for coherence cues that are explicitly provided in the text or discourse, comprehenders must acquire knowledge of these cues to interpret them as signals of coherence. Other coherence cues are more implicit; they are not explicitly provided by the text or discourse, but they arise through what some researchers call inferential processing. To interpret these cues, comprehenders also rely on previously acquired knowledge; however, this knowledge is knowledge of the events and relations in the world. Thus, coherence cues lie along a continuum, ranging from cues that are provided explicitly in the text or discourse to cues that are only implicitly suggested by the text or discourse.

Applicable to the entire continuum of coherence cues is the proposal that interpreting coherence cues is knowledge-based, be it the knowledge of the roles that different linguistic devices play (e.g., that the pronoun she refers to an animate female) or the knowledge that different descriptions of real-world situations imply. In contrast to other models of text and discourse comprehension, the Structure Building Framework does not distinguish between the type of knowledge that comprehenders have acquired about language nor the type of knowledge that comprehenders have acquired about the real world that language describes. Thus, according to the Structure Building Framework, comprehenders use their previously acquired knowledge to interpret cues of coherence, and they use these coherence cues as signals to map the incoming information onto the structure or substructure that they are currently developing. In this way, coherence cues the process of mapping during comprehension.

But what is coherence? Dictionaries define coherence as consistency, continuity, or coordination. In text and discourse, I have identified five types of coherence: referential coherence, which is consistency in who or what is being discussed; temporal coherence, which is consistency in when the events that are being discussed occur; locational coherence, which is consistency in where these events occur; causal coherence, which is consistency in why these events occur; and structural coherence, which is consistency in the form in which events are described in the text or discourse. These five types are not independent; coherent information in text and discourse is typically characterized by all five—and sometimes more. According to the Structure Building Framework, each of these types of coherence should be cued by either implicit or explicit signals, and comprehenders’ interpretation of the cues that signal each of these types of coherence should promote the cognitive process of mapping. The experiments I review in this chapter support these predictions. I begin by reviewing research that supports the prediction that comprehenders interpret cues that signal referential coherence as signals for mapping.

REFERENTIAL COHERENCE

Two utterances are considered referentially coherent if they refer to the same people, places, or things. So, one way to signal referential coherence is simply to repeat a word or phrase, for instance, the repeated word, beer, in the following two sentences: We got some beer out of the trunk. The beer was warm. These two sentences seem referentially coherent because they refer to the same concept: the beer from the trunk, which was (unfortunately) warm. However, simply repeating a word does not ensure referential coherence; the word must refer to the same concept. These two sentences both contain the word beer, We got some beer out of the trunk. John was especially fond of beer; yet, the beer referred to in the second sentence is not necessarily the same as the beer introduced in the first sentence.

According to the Structure Building Framework, comprehenders interpret coherence cues as signals to map the incoming information onto the structure or substructure that they are currently developing. If comprehenders interpret repeated reference as a signal of referential coherence, then comprehenders should map sentences that contain repeated references onto their representation of sentences that contain previous references. And indeed, the sentence, The beer was warm, is read considerably faster when it follows the sentence, We got some beer out of the trunk, than when it follows the sentence, We checked the picnic supplies (Haviland & Clark, 1974), suggesting that comprehenders interpret repeated reference as a signal of referential coherence.

Referential coherence is also signaled in English by the definite article, the. Consider the following two sentences: A psycholinguist was writing a chapter. The psycholinguist was trying to think of examples. The use of the definite article, the, in the second sentence suggests that the psycholinguist who was writing a chapter was also the psycholinguist who was trying to think of examples. In contrast, consider the following two sentences: A scholar was reading a chapter about coherence. A scholar could think only about how hungry he was. In these two sentences, it is unclear whether the scholar who was reading a chapter was also the scholar who was getting hungry. However, if the definite article, the, replaces the indefinite article, a, in the second sentence, A scholar was reading a chapter about coherence. The scholar could think only about how hungry he was, this unfortunate situation is more apparent. Indeed, the definite article, the, can signal co-reference even when the noun it modifies is only a synonym of the previously mentioned noun, for instance, A scholar was reading a chapter about coherence. The litterateur put down the book and went to the kitchen to fix dinner. These examples illustrate how the English definite article, the, can signal co-reference.

According to the Structure Building Framework, comprehenders interpret coherence cues as signals to map the incoming information onto the structure or substructure that they are currently developing. If comprehenders interpret the English definite article, the, as a signal of referential coherence, then comprehenders should map sentences that contain the definite article, the, onto their developing representations. A pioneering experiment by de Villiers (1974) suggested that comprehenders do interpret the definite article, the, as a cue for mapping. In de Villiers’ experiments, two groups of subjects heard the same set of 17 sentences. For one group, all the sentences occurred with only indefinite articles; for example, A store contained a row of cages. A man bought a dog. A child wanted an animal. A father drove to his house. A cottage stood near a park. For the other group of subjects, the same sentences occurred, but in this condition the indefinite articles were replaced with definite articles; for example, The man bought the dog. The child wanted the animal. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• PART I Processing Interclausal Relationships: A Many-Sided Topic
• PART II On Connectives
• PART III From Segmenting to Relating
• PART IV Beyond the Cohesion/Segmentation Dichotomy
• Author Index
• Subject Index