Representation of Complex Goal Structures in Narrative Comprehension
Titel:
Representation of Complex Goal Structures in Narrative Comprehension
Auteur:
Richards, Eric Singer, Murray
Verschenen in:
Discourse processes
Paginering:
Jaargang 31 (2001) nr. 2 pagina's 111-135
Jaar:
2001-03-01
Inhoud:
This study inspected people's sensitivity to complex narrative goal structures. The stories described 2 characters' attempts to accomplish independent subgoals to achieve a joint main goal. In most conditions, the success of the first subgoal was manipulated. The next subgoal always succeeded, and a subsequent target region described the second character attempting to execute the main goal. The target region made no reference to the text ideas of the first subgoal, and it was causally coherent with the second subgoal. Target reading time was greater in the succeed condition than the fail condition (all experiments); and, in the target region, the time needed to recognize a word representing the manipulated subgoal was shorter in the succeed condition (Experiment 3). The results suggest that readers consolidated goal information at the target region in the succeed condition, which entailed the reinstatement of the first subgoal to working memory. The results, coupled with the absence of surface and semantic overlap between the target region and the Subgoal 1 section of the stories, is proposed to favor the constructionist analysis of text comprehension over a strong version of the memory-based analysis.
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