How sentences from a discourse are recognized or verified can be explained by combining theories of item recognition derived from list-learning experiments with hypotheses about the representation of text in memory within the framework of the construction-integration model of discourse comprehension. The implications of such a theory of sentence recognition are worked out for two experimental situations. In the first experiment, subjects read brief texts and were then tested for recognition with verbatim old sentences, paraphrases, inferences, and contextually related and unrelated new distractor sentences after delays from 0 to 4 days. Differential decay rates for the wording and meaning of the text and for situational information were observed. The theory provides a good quantitative account of the data. In the second experiment, the speed-accuracy trade-off in sentence verification for two subject groups with different prior knowledge was studied for old verbatim sentences and inferences. Qualitative predictions derived from the theory with the parameter estimates from the first study were in agreement with the data. Readers without an adequate situational understanding (novices) were found to make quick judgments based on surface and textbase characteristics of the test sentences, while experts in addition utilized their situation model successfully, which required more processing time. © 1990 Academic Press, inc.A large number of experiments on recognition memory exist for lists of words or pictures. Several models of recognition memory are available today which account very well for most of the phenomena observed in these experiments. Can these theories also account for experimental data when the materials used are not lists of items, but coherent discourse? By combining the essential features of current models of recognition memory developed for list- learning studies with a model of discourse comprehension and assumptions about the representation of discourse in memory, a model of sentence recognition and sentence verification can be obtained that accounts for major features of sentence-recognition data. Thus, we do not propose developing a new model for sentence memory. Instead, we shall combine existing models of listlearning and text-comprehension processes to derive a theoretical analysis of sentence recognition and verification.We begin by comparing three current models of item recognition (Gillund & Shiffrin, 1984;Hintzman, 1988;Murdock, 1982) and determine their common essential features, to be used for modelling sentence memory. We will then review some notions

It has recently been proposed that in addition to verbatim and propositional text representations, a reader also forms a cognitive representation of the situations addressed by the text. This theoretical position was supported in three experiments which examined encoding processes, the cognitive products, and retrieval processes of the verbatim, propositional, and situational processing components: The degree of propositional and situational processing was successfully manipulated by varying the subjects 1 study goals. As a consequence of these differential encoding processes, subjects who studied for text summarization remembered more propositional information while subjects with a knowledge acquisition goal remembered more situational information. It was found that the situational encoding and retrieval processes proceeded faster than the respective propositional processes. In a sentence recognition task, subjects more strongly relied upon situational than propositional information, demonstrating the importance of situational representations in text comprehension.

An event-related potentials (ERPs) study examined word-to-text integration processes across sentence boundaries. In a two-sentence passage, the accessibility of a referent for the first content word of the second sentence (the target word) was varied by the wording of the first sentence in one of the following ways: lexically (explicitly using a form of the target word); conceptually (using a paraphrase of the target word), and situationally (encouraging an inference concerning the referent of the target word). A baseline condition had no coreference between the two sentences. ERP results on the target word indicated multiple effects related to word identification and word-to-referent mapping processes. Both the explicit and paraphrase conditions, but not the inference condition, showed a reduced N400 relative to the baseline condition, consistent with immediate integration by lexico-semantic processes. A 300-ms effect (P300) was found in the paraphrase condition. The results were consistent with an immediate integration hypothesis and furthermore differentiated a lexical (N200), a conceptual (P300), and a situational (N400) component for this integration. The conceptual basis appears not to extend to predictive inferences.

Text materials such as those introduced by McKoon and Ratcliff (1986) have been repeatedly used to shape a theoretical understanding of inference processes. Recent results of Keefe and McDaniel (1993) with these materials were intriguing with respect to the generation and persistence of predictive and bridging inferences. To account for these data, the authors developed a formal model within Kintsch's (1988Kintsch's ( , 1998 construction-integration theory. Computer simulations confirmed that the model explains the data well. The model's key features are that (a) inferences may be generated and represented at the situational level and thereby differ from explicit statements, which may be encoded in a bottom-up fashion at the surface, propositional, and situational levels and (b) the maintenance of inferences and explicit statements depends on the interconnectivity of the multilevel representation rather than on an independent strength value of an individual knowledge unit. Recent data are described that support these theoretical assumptions. On the basis of this theoretical and empirical work, a unified model is proposed for the generation and persistence of predictive and bridging inferences. The implications of this unified model relative to previous theories are discussed, and a general taxonomy of inference processes is outlined. DISCOURSE PROCESSES, 33(2), 105-132 Copyright © 2002, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.Correspondence and requests for reprints should be sent to Franz Schmalhofer, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, Kolpingstr. 7, 49069 Osnabrueck, One of the central issues in understanding comprehension processes is the dynamics by which inferences are drawn during reading, their maintenance over time, and their interplay with the representation being constructed. Progress on this front has yielded a distinction among several kinds of inferences. One kind of inference is drawn to establish coherence between a just-read clause and a previously read clause; this is typically called a backward or bridging inference (McKoon & Ratcliff, 1986;Singer & Halldorson, 1996). Another type of inference generates a prediction based on the clause and preexisting knowledge. This type of inference is essentially a knowledge-based elaboration of just-read material-an elaboration that may or may not be needed for establishing text coherence (cf. Seifert, Robertson, & Black, 1985). This kind of assertion or prediction about consequences that are likely items or events in the described situation is typically termed a predictive or forward inference (Murray, Klin, & Myers, 1993;Whitney, Ritchie, & Crane, 1992). Predictive inferences have therefore been assumed to be encoded as part of a referential situation model rather than as part of the text representation proper (Fincher-Kiefer, 1993).In the literature there are differences in the experimental paradigms predominantly used to investigate these two nominal types of inferences, differences in the experimental evidence regarding the ubiquity of ...

SUMMARYWe examine comprehension skill differences in the processes of word-to-text integration, the connection of the meaning of a word, as it is read, to a representation of the text. We review two 'on-line' integration studies using event related potentials (ERPs) to provide fine-grain temporal data on the word-to-text processes of adult readers. The studies demonstrate indicators for word-to-text integration and show differences in these indicators as a function of adult reading comprehension skill. For skilled comprehenders, integration processes were reflected in N400 indicators when a critical word had an explicit link to a word in the prior text and by both N400 and P300 indicators when its meaning was a paraphrase of a prior word. When forward inferences were required for subsequent word-to-text integration, effects for skilled comprehenders were not reliable. Less skilled comprehenders showed delayed and less robust ERP effects, especially when meaning paraphrase was the basis of the integration. We discuss the significance of skill differences in integration processes with a focus on the use of context-dependent word meaning as a possible source of these differences. Copyright # 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Text integration processes are essential to reading comprehension skill. Indeed, a widely shared view in reading education is that there are children who read words seemingly without comprehending them. Such readers are said to have good word-level and decoding skills, reading each successive word as if it were unrelated to the words already read. This description also may fit at least some adults with comprehension problems.As a generalization on comprehension skill, however, word level skill is typically not very strong in readers who have problems in comprehension (Perfetti, 1985) and word level skill is sometimes overestimated in research that targets comprehension-specific reading problems (Perfetti, 1995). Nevertheless, the evidence seems clear that there are both children (Cain & Oakhill, 1999;Nation & Snowling, 1998;Stothard & Hulme, 1992) and adults (Hart, 2005; whose problems with comprehension are not associated with word level decoding.Our purpose here is to examine a specific sense in which this characterization of comprehension problems might be understood: Some readers fail to effectively integrate words with prior context. Furthermore, this integration failure may involve word processing-not decoding, but the ability to link word meanings appropriately in sentence contexts. APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY