The field of discourse processing has dissected many of the levels of representation that are constructed when individuals read or listen to connected discourse. These levels include the surface code, the propositional textbase, the referential situation model, the communication context, and the discourse genre. Discourse psychologists have developed models that specify how these levels are mentally represented and how they are dynamically built during comprehension. This chapter focuses on the meaning representations that are constructed when adults read written text, such as literary stories, technical expository text, and experimenter-generated "textoids." Recent psychological models have attempted to account for the identification of referents of referring expressions (e.g. which person in the text does she refer to), the connection of explicit text segments, the establishment of local and global coherence, and the encoding of knowledge-based inferences.

The extent to which titles influence aesthetic experiences was examined in 3 experiments. Participants viewed and rated illustrations and photographs on understanding and qualities of the aesthetic experience (e.g., enjoyment, interest). The presence and type of title were manipulated across conditions and experiments. Metaphorical titles led to greater aesthetic experiences than either no title or descriptive titles (the elaboration effect). The elaboration effect occurred regardless of whether participants believed the titles to be true or false. It also occurred for art-experienced participants, but only for representational and not abstract illustrations. Random titles lowered understanding but not aesthetic experiences. Overall, titles increased aesthetic experiences only when they contributed to rich and coherent representations.There is a complex mix of cognitive and emotional processing that occurs when we appreciate different visual scenes, including visual artwork. When we view representational paintings, for example, discernable objects in the visual array (e.g., objects, people, and places) must be parsed by means of pattern recognition before their concepts are activated in working memory. In addition to understanding the explicit relations among the concepts, we often draw inferences regarding how the various components work together to form the whole, about the fictive world depicted by the artist, and about the artist's intention. In addition to these representations, we might experience several emotional responses like enjoyment, displeasure, involvement, and interest during the course of comprehension. Collectively, cognitive and emotional responses to art are called aesthetic experiences.The purpose of this study is to examine how verbal information in the form of a title affects and guides our cognitive and emotional responses to viewing artwork. How would a title, label, or any verbal information affect our cognitive processing and aesthetic experiences to a visual scene? Without a title, the representation of the artwork would be primarily derived from the explicit artwork, its immediate context, and the viewer's world knowledge. This representation might be referred to as the "artwork-only" representation. A title would activate schematic information that might add to or otherwise alter this representation. The resulting representation might be referred to as the "artwork-plus-title" representation. Therefore, one might rephrase the question of how titles affect aesthetic experiences as how these two types of representations might differentially affect cognitive and emotional processing.Titles could affect the coherence of the resulting representation by activating schematic information stored in long-term memory. Titles of texts and simple line drawings have been shown to influence

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Comprehension emerges as the results of inference and strategic processes that support the construction of a coherent mental model for a text. However, the vast majority of comprehension skills tests adopt a format that does not afford an assessment of these processes as they operate during reading. This study assessed the viability of the Reading Strategy Assessment Tool (RSAT), which is an automated computer-based reading assessment designed to measure readers’ comprehension and spontaneous use of reading strategies while reading texts. In the tool, readers comprehend passages one sentence at a time, and are asked either an indirect (“What are your thoughts regarding your understanding of the sentence in the context of the passage?”) or direct (e.g., why X?) question after reading each pre-selected target sentence. The answers to the indirect questions are analyzed on the extent that they contain words associated with comprehension processes. The answers to direct questions are coded for the number of content words in common with an ideal answer, which is intended to be an assessment of emerging comprehension. In the study, the RSAT approach was shown to predict measures of comprehension comparable to standardized tests. The RSAT variables were also shown to correlate with human ratings. The results of this study constitute a “proof of concept” and demonstrate that it is possible to develop a comprehension skills assessment tool that assesses both comprehension and comprehension strategies.