Comprehension and recall of text as a function of content variables

Kintsch, Walter; Kozminsky, Ely; Streby, William J.; McKoon, Gail; Keenan, Janice M.

doi:10.1016/s0022-5371(75)80065-x

Cited by 364 publications

(165 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Lexically dense texts are harder for readers to comprehend and their retention scores are generally -but not always -worse, indicating that the subjects experience difficulties in coping with the cognitive load generated by a high lexical density (Kintsch et al 1975;Gibson 1993). Gile (2008) points to the lexical density as one of the prime determinants in cognitive load in interpreting.…”

Section: Cognitive Load: Definition and Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of informational load on disfluencies in interpreting

Plevoets¹,

Defrancq²

2016

TIS

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This article attempts to measure the cognitive or informational load in interpreting by modelling the occurrence rate of the speech disfluency uh(m). In a corpus of 107 interpreted and 240 non-interpreted texts, informational load is operationalized in terms of four measures: delivery rate, lexical density, percentage of numerals, and average sentence length. The occurrence rate of the indicated speech disfluency was modelled using a rate model. Interpreted texts are analyzed based on the interpreter's output and compared with the input of non-interpreted texts, and measure the effect of source text features. The results demonstrate that interpreters produce significantly more uh(m)s than non-interpreters and that this difference is mainly due to the effect of lexical density on the output side. The main source predictor of uh(m)s in the target text was shown to be the delivery rate of the source text. On a more general level of significance, the second analysis also revealed an increasing effect of the numerals in the source texts and a decreasing effect of the numerals in the target texts.

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Section: Cognitive Load: Definition and Causesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The effect of informational load on disfluencies in interpreting

Plevoets¹,

Defrancq²

2016

TIS

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“…Sentences employing repetition were read more rapidly, suggesting that they were easier to map onto a developing structure (Garnham, 1981(Garnham, , 1984Garrod & Sanford, 1977;Haviland & Clark, 1974;Kintsch, Kozminsky, Streby, McKoon, & Keenan, 1975;Mannelis & Yekovich, 1976;Sanford & Garrod, 1980;Yekovich & Walker, 1978). Data from memory tasks (cued recall, free recall, and priming) suggest that propositions co-referenced by repetition were more likely to be represented near one another, perhaps in the same substructure (Hayes-Roth & Thorndyke, 1979;Kintsch et al, 1975;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1980a, 1980b. Another mechanism that signals congruity is causality; the more causally related a target sentence was to its preceding context, the more rapidly it was read (Keenan, Baillet, & Brown, 1984) and the more likely it was to be recalled when cued by its preceding sentence (Black & Bern, 1981).…”

Section: The Processing Shift Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface information loss in comprehension

Gernsbacher

1985

Cognitive Psychology

198

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Shortly after a sentence has been comprehended, information about its exact surface form (e.g., its word order) becomes less available. The present research demonstrated this phenomenon during the comprehension of nonverbal stimuli (picture stories). In Experiment 1, significantly more surface (left/right orientation) information was lost after comprehending several picture stories than just one; in Experiment 2, more was lost after comprehending an entire picture story than half of one. In Experiment 3, subjects segmented the picture stories into their constituents; in Experiment 4, significantly more surface information was lost after crossing these constituents' boundaries than before. The present research also investigated why surface information is lost. Four explanations were considered: Surface information loss is the result of performing grammatical transformations (the linguistic hypothesis), exceeding short-term memory limitations (the memory limitations hypothesis), integrating information into gist (the integration hypothesis), shifting from building one substructure to initiating another (the processing shift hypothesis). The linguistic and memory limitations hypotheses were considered inadequate; the integration and the processing shift hypotheses were tested in the last set of experiments. In Experiment 5 (using nonverbal stimuli), the predictions made by the processing shift hypothesis were confirmed; in Experiment 6 (using verbal stimuli), these results were replicated. Other implications of the processing shift hypothesis concerning surface information loss are discussed.A well-known phenomenon involved in language comprehension is this: Shortly after a passage is comprehended, information about the exact surface form of its sentences (e.g., their word order) becomes less available. By far the most cited demonstration of this phenomenon is Sachs ' (1967). Her subjects listened to a narrative story that included a sentence such as 1. He sent a letter about it to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.After comprehending this sentence, subjects decided whether it or Sentence 2 was the sentence they just heard. 2A letter about it was sent to Galileo, the great Italian scientist.If subjects were tested immediately after hearing the target sentence, their ability to discriminate between it and its reversed form was around 90%. However, if they were tested after comprehending only 80 additional syllables, performance fell to just above chance.Requests for reprints should be sent to Dr. M. A. Gernsbacher,

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“…Propositions with few connections and that elaborate other ideas are represented at lower levels. Several empirical studies have demonstrated that a person's memory for expository prose information is a function of propositional location within the text's hierarchical structure: important propositions 4re remembered better than unimportant ones (Kintsch, 1974;Kintsch, Kozminsky, Streby, McKoon & Keenan, 1975;Meyer, 1975;Meyer, Haring, Brandt & Walker, 1980). This recall phenomenon appears to be quite robust and has come to be called "the levels effect.…”

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confidence: 99%