Language Comprehension As Structure BuildingThis book presents a new theoretical framework -- what Gernsbacher calls the Structure Building Framework -- for understanding language comprehension in particular, and cognitive processing in general. According to this framework, the goal in comprehending both linguistic and nonlinguistic materials is to build a coherent mental representation or "structure" of the information being comprehended. As such, the underlying processes and mechanisms of structure building are viewed as general, cognitive processes and mechanisms. The strength of the volume lies in its empirical detail: a thorough literature review and solid original data. |
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Contents
Chapter | 1 |
The Advantage of First Mention | 10 |
Is the Advantage lost when first and secondmentioned | 17 |
The Advantage of First Mention | 25 |
Do first clauses form the foundation for their sentencelevel | 31 |
Do comprehenders represent clausal dependencies? | 39 |
The Communicative Function | 46 |
Does Referential Coherence facilitate mapping? | 53 |
Do more explicit pronouns trigger suppression more powerfully? | 126 |
What about other levels of anaphoric explicitness? | 133 |
Why are the mechanisms of suppression and enhancement | 137 |
Do cataphoric devices improve their concepts | 145 |
Are cataphorically marked concepts more resistant | 151 |
Suppression and Enhancement | 161 |
INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES | 167 |
Individual Differences in Accessing | 175 |
Does Causal Coherence facilitate mapping? | 60 |
Do comprehenders quickly forget information after crossing | 70 |
Why do comprehenders quickly forget the exact form | 72 |
Do comprehenders build separate substructures to represent | 78 |
Chapter 4 | 84 |
Are inappropriate meanings mutually inhibited? | 94 |
Does suppression dampen less relevant associations | 104 |
How does an anaphoras referent become most activated? | 110 |
Why are concepts as activated before pronouns as after? | 117 |
Individual Differences in Shifting | 185 |
Are lessskilled comprehenders less efficient at suppressing | 186 |
Individual Differences in Enhancement | 203 |
CONCLUSIONS | 221 |
In what medium are mental structures and substructures | 227 |
What is lost by describing language comprehension at | 239 |
REFERENCES | 245 |
277 | |
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Common terms and phrases
access to recently Advantage of Clause adverbial ambiguous words anaphoric reference ASHTRAY cataphoric devices Clause Recency cognitive processes coherence inferences compre comprehenders hear Comprehension Skill context display demonstrate example experiment experimental concepts experimental sentences explicit anaphors Faust Figure first-mentioned participants gathered the kindling Gernsbacher henders homophones hypothesis illustrates immediately inappropriate meanings Journal of Verbal Kintsch language comprehension left/right orientation less efficient less explicit less-skilled comprehenders linguistic Lisa meanings of ambiguous mechanism of suppression memory cells mental structures Mention more-skilled comprehenders nonreferents nouns occur PAM ANN phrases picture stories predicted processes and mechanisms pronouns psycholinguistics Psychology reaction recently comprehended information referentially coherent repeated names represented second clause second concepts second-mentioned participants semantic sentence sets shift spoken stress Structure Building Framework substructure suppression and enhancement syntactic tences test display test names appear test point test words tion trigger suppression typically University of Oregon unrelated unstressed Verbal Behavior verbs versus zero anaphors