Comprehension: Written and Spoken Language

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Chapter 10

• Comprehension Written and Spoken Language

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Overview

• We focus here on Millers fourth and fifth levels
  of language analysis-- the conceptual and belief
  levels.
• Example
• Ambiguous sentences, revisited
• Mary and John saw the mountains while they were
  flying to California.

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Traditional Comprehension Research

• Linguistic intuitions Judgements about the
  acceptability of sentences.
• Sachs (1967)
• Jarvella (1970)
• People hold information about a sentence in
  memory until the sentence, or a meaningful
  clause, is completed.

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Limitations of Traditional Research

• Raised more questions than it answered.
• We need more precise methods of investigating
  comprehension.
• Measures that allow us to study comprehension as
  it happens.

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On-Line Measures of Comprehension

• Measure comprehension as it happens.
• Written Language A sentence appears on-screen,
  followed by a word. Subjects decide if the word
  was in the just-read sentence.
• Spoken Language
• The interruption technique.
• Monitoring.

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Comprehension and Mental Structure Building

• Gernsbacher (1990)
• Language comprehension is a process of building
  mental structures.
• Involves Laying a foundation, mapping
  information onto the structure, and shifting to a
  new structure.

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The Structure Building Framework
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Evidence for Structure Building

• Advantage of First Mention
• Ideas mentioned in the first sentence retain a
  special significance.
• Advantage of Clause Recency
• Where the most recently presented character shows
  an advantage.

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Definite Versus Indefinite Articles

• The is a definite article.
• A, an, and some are indefinite articles.
• Gernsbacher predicts sentences with definite
  articles will be more coherent and sensible then
  sentences with indefinite articles.

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Sample Sentences
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Enhancement and Suppression

• Enhancement
• Where memory nodes are boosted or enhanced in
  their level of activation.
• Suppression
• Where activated nodes that become unrelated to
  the focus decrease in activation.

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Situation Models and Comprehension

• A situation model is a representation of the real
  world situation described in a passage of text.
• They include temporal and spatial information,
  information about the objects, locations and
  people mentioned in the stories, and the
  inferences we draw while comprehending the
  stories.

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Reference

• Involves finding connections between elements in
  a sentence or text passage.
• Dave studied hard for his statistics exam.
• Antecedent Dave
• Anaphoric Reference His
• Reference Linguistic process of alluding to a
  concept by using another name.

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Implication and Inference

• Implication An intended-- but not explicitly
  mentioned-- reference in a sentence.
• Inference The process by which the reader draws
  connections between concepts, determines
  referents and derives conclusions.

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Types of Reference and Implication (Clark, 1977)
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Bridging

• Clarks term for the process of constructing a
  connection between concepts.
• Speakers and listeners must both build the same
  bridges.
• Authorized When the listener draws the inference
  intended by the speaker.
• Unauthorized A mistaken inference on the
  listeners part.

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Multiple Processes in Drawing Inferences

• Three steps
• Retrieving related information from memory.
• Storing this information in memory so you can
  make connections / draw inferences.
• Integrating meanings -- making connections
  between antecedents and referents.

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The Extent of Drawing Inferences

• How extensively do people draw inferences when
  comprehending?
• Minimalist position Only to the extent that the
  information cannot be retrieved automatically.
• Does this position underestimate the extent of
  inference drawing during normal comprehension?

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Reading

• Just and Carpenter (1980)
• Gaze Duration Procedures
• On line technique for studying reading
  comprehension.
• Uses an eye-tracker and camera to measure how
  long the eyes dwell on each word.

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Gaze Duration Assumptions

• Immediacy
• Readers interpret each content word of a text as
  they encounter it in the passage.
• Eye-Mind
• The eye remains fixated on a word as long as the
  word is being actively processed during reading.

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Online Reading Effects

• Regressive eye movements (back to a
  previously-read portion of text).
• Most content words are fixated on.
• Saccades are shorter here than in scene
  perception.
• Meaningless words (the, of) are rarely fixated
  on.

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Sample Eye Fixations
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The Just and Carpenter Model

• Evidence at two levels of comprehension.
• Microscopic / Word level processes.
• Macroscopic processes such as comprehension time
  at the idea and proposition level.

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Just and Carpenter Model, Illustrated
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Spoken Language and Conversation

• Studying Spoken Comprehension
• The auditory spoken window
• Recorded passages are coded into units, and then
  played to subjects one unit at a time.
• Subjects press a button to advance to the next
  unit.
• Each button press is timed.

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The Structure of Conversations (Taking Turns)

• Typically, there is little overlap between
  participants utterances.
• Rules
• 1) The current speaker gets to select the next
  speaker.
• 2) If Rule 1 is not used, anyone can become the
  next speaker.

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Social Roles and Settings

• Formal settings among strangers lead to more
  structured, rule-governed conversations.
• Superiors have more leeway in breaking the
  turn-taking rules.
• Men more likely to interrupt women than the
  reverse.

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Conversational Rules

• Grice (1975)
• Are derived from the Cooperative Principle
• Each participant in a conversation implicitly
  assumes that all speakers are following the rules
  and that each contribution to the conversation is
  sincere and appropriate.

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Grices Conversational Maxims
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Topic Maintenance

• Process of making our contributions relevant and
  to the topic.
• Schank (1977)
• Studied permissible and impermissible moves
  participants can make with regard to topic
  shifts.

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Online Theories During Conversation

• Direct Model of what our conversational partner
  knows and is interested in, what the partner is
  like.
• Second-Order An evaluation of the other
  participants direct theory -- what you think
  he/she believes about you.

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Empirical Effects in Conversation

• Indirect Requests When we ask someone to do
  something by an indirect and presumably more
  polite statement.
• Do you have the time,
• -Versus
• What time is it?

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Face Saving (Holtgraves, 1998)

• Nicks class presentation either went well or
  went poorly. Nick asks you how he did?
• Violations of the relevance maxim are acceptable
  if meant to save face (e.g., we change the topic
  rather than tell Nick how bad his presentation
  was).

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Egocentric Speech

• Optimal Design Principle Speakers design
  utterances so listeners can understand them.
• Keysar (1998) Adults-- much like children-- often
  disregard this principle by speaking
  egocentrically (by failing to appreciate another
  persons perspective).
• Our first pass at an utterance is typically
  egocentric.

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Summary of Major Topics Covered in Chapter 10

• Overview (conceptual and rule knowledge,
  comprehension research and tasks, structure
  building and situational models).
• Reference, Inference and Memory.
• Reading.
• Spoken Language and Conversation.