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1、Chapter 7 Discourse Comprehension and Memory Supervisor:Zhang Zhimin Reporter:Lang QianContentsIntroduction Comprehension of DiscourseMemory for DiscourseSchemata and Discourse ProcessingEducational ImplicationsIntroductionvThis chapter deals with the ways we comprehend and remember units of languag
2、e longer than the sentencethat is,connected discourse.vResearch on discourse has grown significantly in recent decades,for several reasons.We rarely speak in isolated sentence,discourse seems to be a more natural unit of language to investigate.Sentences are ambiguous or obscure apart from their dis
3、course context.Discourse provides a rich source of material for those interested in the cognitive processes used in language.Comprehension of discourseTitleLocal and global discourse structureStrategies used to establish coherenceCohesionSummaryRole of working memoryLocal and global discourse struct
4、urevComprehension of connected discourse depends less on the meaning of the individual sentences than on their arrange-ment.Indeed,it is entirely possible for a group of mean-ingful sentences to be thrown together in a way that makes no sense at all.e.g.Carlos arranged to take golf lessons from the
5、local pro-fessional.His dog,a cocker spaniel,was expecting pups again.Andrea had the car washed for the big wedding.She expected Carlos to help her move into her new apartment.Local and global discourse structurevJohn bought a cake at the bake shop.The cake was chocolate with white frosting and it w
6、as read“Happy birthday,Joan”in red letters.John was particularly pleased with the lettering.He brought it over to Gregs house,and together they worked on the rest of details.vJohn bought a cake at the bake shop.The birthday card was signed by all of the employees.The party went on until after midnig
7、ht.Local and global discourse structureThe contrast between the last two passages illustrates an important point that we must look beneath the surface to understand discourse structure.Superficially,the last passage is incomplete,but the overall result in readers minds may be quite complete.The thre
8、e passages discussed illustrate two levels of dis-course structure.1.Local structure:in the relationships between individual sentences in the discourse.2.Global structure:it is our knowledge of the structure corresponding to the topic that enables us to comprehend and remember the shorter passage ab
9、out the topic.Cohesion vAt the local level,a discourse is coherent if there are semantic relationships between successive sentences.Halliday and Hason define cohesion as referring to“the range of possibilities that exist for linking something with what has gone before”.1.Categories of cohesion 2.Ana
10、phoric and cataphoric referenceCategories of cohesionPronominal DemonstrativeComparative SubstitutionEllipsisConjunction Lexical ReiterationSynonymHyponymAnaphoric and cataphoric referencevCohesion consists of relating some current expression to one encountered earlier.This is called anaphoric refer
11、-ence.When we use an expression to refer back to some-thing previously mentioned in discourse,the referring expression is called an anaphor,and the previous refer-ent is called an antecedent.vOne of these forms of cohesion anaphoric reference has commanded the great interest among psychologists.Ther
12、e are two reasons in it.One reason is that anaphoric reference enables us to explore the role of working memory in discourse com-prehension.The other reason is that anaphoric reference illuminates the role of communicative conventions in discourse.Strategies used to establish coherencevGiven informa
13、tion It refers to information that an author or speaker assumes the reader or listener already knows,whereas new infor-mation is information that the comprehender is assumed to not know.e.g.It was Steve who robbed the bank.It was the bank that Steve robbed.Strategies used to establish coherencevGive
14、n/New strategy Clark and Haviland suggest that readers expect authors to use given information to refer to information the readers already know or can identify and to use new information to refer to concepts with which they are not already familiar.Three stages about this strategy 1)Identifying the
15、given and new information in the current sentence.2)Finding an antecedent in memory for the given information 3)attaching the new information to this spot in memory.Strategies used to establish coherencevDirecting matching The simplest case is surely study that in which the given information in the
16、target sentence directly matches an antecedent in the context sentence.And in comprehending the target sentence,we first divide it into given and new information.Even though direct matches are the simple case of sentence relations,they are not so simple that they can be reduced to merely searching f
17、or a specific word.Find an antecedent for given information in a target sentence resembles sear-ching for a concept more than searching for a word.So when we speak of direct speeches,we are talking of match-es of underlying concepts previously introduced into the discourse.Strategies used to establi
18、sh coherencevBridging In some cases,we dont have a direct antecedent for the given information but can still tie the sentences together.The contrast between bridging and direct matching 1)Last Christmas Eugene went to a lot of parties.This Christmas he got very drunk again.2)Last Christmas Eugene go
19、t absolutely smashed.This Christmas he got very drunk again.Haviland and Clark have shown that require bridges take longer to comprehend than those for which there is a direct match of antecedents.Strategies used to establish coherencevReinstating old information I am trying to find a black dog.He i
20、s a short and has a dog tag on his neck that says Fred.Yesterday that dog bit a little girl.She was scared,but she wasnt really hurt.Yesterday a black dog bit a little girl.It got away,and we are still trying to find it.He is short and a dog tag on his neck that says Fred.She was scared,but she wasn
21、t really hurt.When a sentence refers to some-thing or someone already intro-duced but no longer in the fore-ground the comprehender must reinstate information that is to be matched with the target in-formation.Strategies used to establish coherencevIdentifying new topics of discourse All of these st
22、rategies share the implicit assumption that part of a target sentence should relate to earlier infor-mation,but sometimes the information is all new and the target is meant to establish a new topic of discourse.The new information is generally taken as an elaboration,sometimes a small detail,of the
23、given information.Once introduced,this new information may itself serve as an antecedent for later sentences,which are subordinated to it.The natural result of this integration process is a hier-archical structure in episodic memory.Role of working memoryvAs with other aspects of language,individual
24、 experiences and abilities vary.Because the process we have been des-cribing in this section deals with the operation of working memory,it would be reasonable to expect that individual differences in working memory might influence how we comprehend discourse.vDaneman and Carpenter distinguish betwee
25、n the storage and processing function of working memory.The limited resources of working memory are allocated to processing certain tasks as well as to temporarily storing the results of these tasks.Role of working memoryvWorking memory capacity,of course,is not the only individual characteristics t
26、hat influences discourse com-prehension.Another is the background knowledge that the individual may have of the subject matter in the passage.vWhen we encounter unfamiliar passages,it is more diffi-cult to draw appropriate inferences.In contrast,when we have the information in permanent memory that
27、helps us interpret the information,its easier to draw inferences.Summary vA discourse is coherent if its elements are easily related to one another.At the local or microstructural,coherence is achieved primarily through the appropriate use of cohesive ties between sentences.vThe given/new strategy s
28、pecifies a three-stage process of comprehending sentences in discourse.And comprehen-sion is impeded when there is no antecedent,forcing us to form a bridging inference,or when the antecedent was not recent,forcing us to reinstate the antecedent.Memory for discoursePropositional representations Summ
29、ary Simultaneous investigation of all three levelsSituational modelsSurface representationsSurface representations vSurface representation:we remember the exact words that we encountered.vOne early study that suggested that surface represen-tations of discourse are very short-lived presented indi-vi
30、duals with a long oral passage that was interrupted at irregular intervals.And some researchers found that the surface or verbatim form of a sentence is stored in working memory only until its meaning is understood,then purged to make room for the next sentence.Propositional representationsvProposit
31、ional representation:It specifies the meaning apart from the exact words used.vIf we indeed purge working memory of the exact wording.What is left is the propositional structure of a sentence.vEvidence for the psychological reality of propositions comes from Kintsch and Keenan(1973),who showed that
32、the number of propositions influences the time required to read a passage when preparing to recall it.vThe most interesting aspect of Mckoon and Ratcliffs study is their two definitions of close:the number of intervening words in the surface structure versus the number of intervening propositions in
33、 the discourse structure.Propositional representationsv Interferences and propositional representations Inferences are not mere recall errors,nor are they random,spurious contributions by imaginative readers.Inferences are intrinsic to discourse structure.Authors leave out information that they thin
34、k readers will be able to figure out.Mckoon and Ratcliff conclude,on the basis of a number of studies,that we automatically draw inferences during reading only when two conditions are present.One con-dition is the one we have been discussing:The inference must be necessary to make a context locally
35、coherent.Their second condition is that the information on which the inference is must easily activated.Propositional representationsvKintsch explains the results by appealing the two levels of representation we have discussed:a short-term surface representation that decays is otherwise lost very qu
36、ickly and a long-term propositional representation.Implicit propositions have only a propositional representation,and it is assumed that consulting a surface representation is quicker than retrieving a propositional representation.Situational modelsvSituational models represent the state affairs tha
37、t a text refers to.That is,the assumption is that as comprehend the propositions of a text,we construct a mental or situational model of the world as described by the text.vFurthermore,the construction of a situational model influences the accessibility of previous information in discourse.Simultane
38、ous investigations of all three levelsvMost of the studies we have discussed to this point have attempt to isolate one of these levels.However,its also helpful to set up a study that attempts to investigate how each of the levels operates in the same experiment.vIn Kintschs study,we see that surface
39、 memory is strong only in the immediate test and falls to chance level shortly after that propositional recognition starts stronger,and falls over time.But memory for situations is initially very strong and shows little loss over retention intervals studied.SummaryvWe store discourse in three wayssu
40、rface representations,propositional representations,and situational modelsand each appears to be influenced by different variables and subject to different decay rates.Surface representations are short-lived except when the wording is pragmatically significant.Propositional representations are much
41、better retained and include the meaning of presented information along with any inferences we have drawn.Situational models are retained the best and are based on spatial or casual relations between parts of text.Schemata and discourse processingTitleschemataGenres SummaryNarrative discourse process
42、ingInaccessibility of knowledgeSchemata and discourse processingvA schema(plural:schemata)is a structure in a semantic memory that specifies the general or expected arrange-ment of a body of information.It is generally associated with the early work on the story recall by Barlett.Barlett attempted t
43、o show that remembering is not a rote or repro-ductive process but rather a process in which we retain the overall gist of an event and then reconstruct the details from this overall impression.Activation of appropriate schematavSome researchers show that comprehension and memory are poor when we do
44、 not have a schema that corresponds to the story that is unfolding,because it is nearly im-possible to see the significance of the events being described.vBut in other instances,we may have an appropriate schema in memory but fail to activate it for one reason or another.Some researchers have convin
45、cingly demonstrat-ed that comprehension and memory will be poor when the passage is written so obscurely that we cant determine what might be the right schema.Reconstruction of schema-specific detailsvOne of Barletts notions was the activated schema served as a retrieval plan,summoning up certain de
46、tails rather than others by virtue of their centrality to the schema.vSome researchers made some tests.Through these tests,they provide evidence of the directive function of schema in discourse processing.It is clear that the schema that is in effect during comprehension has a powerful organizing ef
47、fect on recall.Moreover,information central to the schema is well remembered,but other details seem to be misplaced,although they can be revived with a shift perspective.All told,the evidence that schemata influence discourse processing is quite impressive.Genres vGenres are important because they p
48、rovide us with general expectations regarding the way information in a discourse will be arranged.vOne genre that has been studied a great deal in discourse research has been narrative discourse.Typically,stories begin with the introduction of characters and setting.vNarrative discourse can be contr
49、asted with expository discourse,in which the goal of the writer is not to tell a story but rather to convey information about the subject matter.Narrative discourse processingvStory grammars A story grammar is a schema in semantic memory that identifies the typical or expected arrangement of events
50、in a story.In general,story grammars view narratives as consisting of a setting,one or more episodes,and then an ending.Episodes have a characteristic structure:some initiating event occurs,leading to some internal response on the part of the protagonist.Narrative discourse processingvPsychological