Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension.

Graesser, Arthur C.; Singer, Murray; Trabasso, Tom

doi:10.1037/0033-295x.101.3.371

Cited by 1,936 publications

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“…In this respect, we adopt several widely accepted ideas that are shared by most cognitive architectures and theories of comprehension (e.g., Anderson, 1983Anderson, , 1993Graesser, Millis, & Zwaan, 1997;Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994;Kintsch, 1998;Laird, 2012;Laird, Newell & Rosenbloom, 1987). During comprehension, people construct bridging inferences between observed events and activated memory representations, developing complex relational and causal structures (e.g., Gernsbacher, 1990Gernsbacher, , 1991Gernsbacher, , 1997.…”

Section: The Course Of Surprise: the Algorithmic Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why some surprises are more surprising than others: Surprise as a metacognitive sense of explanatory difficulty

Foster

Keane

2015

Cognitive Psychology

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The UCD community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters! (@ucd_oa) Some rights reserved. For more information, please see the item record link above. TitleWhy some surprises are more surprising than others: Surprise as a metacognitive sense of explanatory difficulty Publisher's statement This is the author's version of a work that was accepted for publication in Cognitive Psychology. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Cognitive Psychology (VOL 81, ISSUE 2015, (2015 Early theories of surprise, including Darwin's, argued that it was predominantly a basic emotion. Recently, theories have taken a more cognitive view of surprise, casting it as a process of "making sense of surprising events". The current paper advances the view that the essence of this sense-making process is explanation; specifically, that people's perception of surprise is a metacognitive estimate of the cognitive work involved in explaining an abnormal event. So, some surprises are more surprising because they are harder toexplain. This proposal is tested in eight experiments that explore how (i) the contents of memory can influence surprise, (ii) different classes of scenarios can retrieve more/less relevant knowledge from memory to explain surprising outcomes, (iii) how partial explanations constrain the explanation process reducing surprise, (iv) how, overall, any factor that acts to increase the cognitive work in explaining a surprising event, results in higher levels of surprise (e.g., task demands to find several rather than just one explanation). Across the present studies, using a many different materials, paradigms and measures, it is consistently and repeatedly found that the difficulty of explaining a surprising outcome is the best predictor for people's perceptions of the surprisingness of events. Alternative accounts of these results are considered, as are future directions for this research.

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Section: The Course Of Surprise: the Algorithmic Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why some surprises are more surprising than others: Surprise as a metacognitive sense of explanatory difficulty

Foster

Keane

2015

Cognitive Psychology

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“…In contrast, there has been some debate about whether predictive inferences are drawn (see, e.g., Fincher-Kiefer, 1995;Garrod, O'Brien, Morris, & Rayner, 1990;Graesser et al, 1994;Keefe & McDaniel, 1993;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992;Murray, Klin, & Myers, 1993;St. George, Mannes, & Hoffman, 1997;Whitney, Ritchie, & Clark, 1991).…”

Section: Predictive and Coherence Inferencesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…People recognize test words related to coherence inferences as rapidly as they recognize test words explicitly stated in the story (e.g., Potts et al, 1988), whether recognition is measured by lexical decision or naming latency (Keenan, Golding, Potts, Jennings, & Aman, 1989;Potts et al, 1988). In addition, people recognize words related to coherence inferences faster after comprehending sentences implying these inferences than they do after sentences that do not imply inferences (Potts et al, 1988).In contrast, there has been some debate about whether predictive inferences are drawn (see, e.g., Fincher-Kiefer, 1995;Garrod, O'Brien, Morris, & Rayner, 1990;Graesser et al, 1994;Keefe & McDaniel, 1993;McKoon & Ratcliff, 1992;Murray, Klin, & Myers, 1993;St. George, Mannes, & Hoffman, 1997;Whitney, Ritchie, & Clark, 1991).…”

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confidence: 99%

Right and Left Hemisphere Cooperation for Drawing Predictive and Coherence Inferences during Normal Story Comprehension

Beeman¹,

Bowden²,

2000

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In three experiments, healthy young participants listened to stories promoting inferences and named inference-related test words presented to the right visual field-Left Hemisphere (rvf-LH) or to the left visual field-Right Hemisphere (lvf-RH). Participants showed priming for predictive inferences only for target words presented to the lvf-RH; in contrast, they showed priming for coherence inferences only for target words presented to the rvf-LH. These results, plus the fact that patients with RH brain damage have difficulty drawing coherence inferences and do not show inference-related priming, suggest that information capable of supporting predictive inferences is more likely to be initially activated in the RH than the LH, but following coherence breaks these concepts (now coherence inferences) are completed in the LH. These results are consistent with the theory that the RH engages in relatively coarse semantic coding, which aids full comprehension of discourse.When people comprehend stories, they often make inferences -they assume that some events occurred in the stories, even though those events were not explicitly described. Consider what happens when people read or hear the premise that "The shuttle sat on the ground in the distance, waiting for the signal to be given." If they later read or hear a sentence with a coherence break, that is a sentence that interrupts the logical chain of a story, such as "After a huge roar and a bright flash, the shuttle disappeared into space leaving clouds of smoke in its wake," most people infer that the shuttle was launched. As established decades ago, once comprehenders make inferences, they include these inferences when recalling stories (Glenn, 1978;Paris & Lindauer, 1976;Baggett, 1975), and they have a difficult time distinguishing inferred information from information explicitly stated (Johnson, Bransford, & Solomon, 1973). This suggests that normal comprehenders incorporate some inferences into their representation of the discourse. HHS Public Access Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript Author ManuscriptSome RH-damaged (RHD) patients have difficulty drawing inferences, suggesting that the right hemisphere (RH) may play an important role when comprehenders draw such inferences (Beeman, 1993;Brownell, Potter, Bihrle, & Gardner, 1986). The following experiments explore the idea that concepts necessary for supporting inferences are more likely to be initially activated in the RH than in the LH and that at the coherence break inferences are more likely to be selected-activated strongly enough to reach awareness, to be processed further, or to be output, in the sense proposed by Allport (1987) -in the LH for incorporation into the discourse representation (Beeman, 1993). PREDICTIVE AND COHERENCE INFERENCESIn principle, comprehenders could draw several types of inferences. Comprehenders could make inferences to embellish or elaborate on a story. They could draw inferences to predict upcoming consequences. For example, as soon as people hear tha...

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“…The convergent skills model (Vellutino et al 2007) views semantic and syntactic knowledge as key skills that feed into language comprehension and hence into reading comprehension. The lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002) connections between what is presently being read and existing knowledge (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994). There are many different forms of inferences, such as pronoun resolution, bridging, elaborative and evaluative inferences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of vocabulary, working memory and inference making ability in reading comprehension in Down syndrome

Nash

Heath

2011

Research in Developmental Disabilities

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Constructing inferences during narrative text comprehension.

Cited by 1,936 publications

References 174 publications

Why some surprises are more surprising than others: Surprise as a metacognitive sense of explanatory difficulty

Why some surprises are more surprising than others: Surprise as a metacognitive sense of explanatory difficulty

Right and Left Hemisphere Cooperation for Drawing Predictive and Coherence Inferences during Normal Story Comprehension

The role of vocabulary, working memory and inference making ability in reading comprehension in Down syndrome

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