Inference Processes: Integrating Relevant Knowledge and Text Information

Halldorson, Michael; Singer, Murray

doi:10.1207/s15326950dp3402_2

Cited by 24 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…These sources of information guide the cognitive activities that underlie comprehension, including (but not limited to) the activation of meaning from long-term memory (e.g., Kintsch, 1998;McNamara & McDaniel, 2004;Rizzella & O'Brien, 2002), the application of prior knowledge to reason about text events and descriptions (Anderson & Pichert, 1978;Bartlett, 1932;Bower, Black, & Turner, 1979;Bransford & Johnson, 1972;Schank & Abelson, 1977), and the validation of unfolding logical arguments on the basis of beliefs about the world (e.g., Halldorson & Singer, 2002;Lea, Mulligan, & Walton, 2005;Singer, Halldorson, Lear, & Andrusiak, 1992). Theoretical views of discourse comprehension detail the contributions of prior knowledge and text content in describing readers' attempts at understanding and remembering what they read (e.g., Long, Wilson, Hurley, & Prat, 2006;.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

How do readers handle incorrect information during reading?

Rapp¹

2008

Memory & Cognition

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confidence: 99%

How do readers handle incorrect information during reading?

Rapp¹

2008

Memory & Cognition

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“…Causal representations are necessary to solve syntactic ambiguities or to comprehend texts by inferring causes and consequences (Halldorson & Singer, 2002;Singer & O'Connell, 2003;Valencia-Laver & Light, 2000;Wiley & Myers, 2003), but the traditional psycholinguistic view of causality in text comprehension does not address whether such representations are exclusively semantic or require sensory-driven representations. That is, traditionally, sensory representations and semantic processing have been assumed independent from each other and located in different cognitive (i.e., cerebral) modules.…”

Section: Causality In Sentence and Text Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Perhaps the highest level of causal representation occurs during discourse processing (Halldorson & Singer, 2002;Singer & O'Connell, 2003;Valencia-Laver & Light, 2000;Wiley & Myers, 2003). How does the relation between causal perception and higherorder causal reasoning contribute to causal inference at a discourse level?…”

Section: Conclusion and Further Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language-Driven Spatiotemporal Causal Integration in the Prefrontal and Premotor Cortices

Tirado¹,

Young

2011

RLA

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The behavioral literature has reported the differentiation between perceived causality and higher-order causal reasoning. The advent of modern technology such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics and behavioral experimental designs have raised new hypotheses and opened new possibilities to address the perceptual and higher-order distinction in causality. In this article, we discuss and integrate recent biological and psycholinguistic work on both perceptual and linguistic representations of causality that challenges the modular view of human causal knowledge. We suggest that linguistic and sensory-perceptual representations of causal events might coexist and interact in the brain. In this sense, whereas previous work proposes that the posterior areas of the brain automatically detect the spatiotemporal structure of visual causal events and that the frontal areas integrate such information in a causal representation, results from our research program suggest that this integration process is language-driven. Two different semantic representations of causative linguistic structures (lexical and periphrastic causatives) might influence cognitive control mechanisms, memory resources, and preparatory motor responses when observers evaluate the causal nature of visual stimuli.Keywords: Causal reasoning, neural basis of causation, lexical causatives, periphrastic causatives.14 RLA. Revista de Lingüística Teórica y Aplicada, 49 (1), I Sem. 2011 RESUMENLa bibliografía conductual ha reportado diferencias entre los procesos de percepción causal y procesos superiores de razonamiento causal. El desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías como la resonancia magnética nuclear funcional, la perspectiva teórica de la lingüística cognitiva y los diseños experimentales conductuales han propiciado nuevas hipótesis y abierto nuevas posibilidades para abordar la diferencia entre percepción causal y razonamiento causal. En este artículo discutimos e integramos los recientes avances biológicos y psicolingüísti-cos sobre las representaciones perceptuales y lingüísticas de la causalidad que desafían la visión modular del conocimiento causal en el humano. Sugerimos que las representaciones lingüísticas y sensorio-perceptuales de eventos causales podrían coexistir e interactuar en el cerebro. En este sentido, mientras trabajos anteriores proponen que las áreas posteriores del cerebro detectan automáticamente la estructura espacio-temporal de los eventos causales visuales y que áreas frontales integran esa información en una representación causal, los resultados de nuestro programa de investigación sugieren que este proceso es modulado por el lenguaje. Las representaciones semánticas de dos estructuras lingüísticas diferentes (léxica y perifrástica) podrían influir en los mecanismos de control cognoscitivo, los recursos de memoria y las respuestas motoras preparatorias cuando los participantes evalúan la naturaleza causal de los eventos visuales.Palabras clave: Razonamiento causal, base...

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“…The act of inferencing is paramount for text comprehension because it makes possible for readers to establish a representation of the meaning of the text in memory on the basis of its coherence relations and the readers' general knowledge (Gernsbacher, 1990(Gernsbacher, , 1997Halldorson & Singer, 2002;Linderholm, 2002;Long, Oppy, & Seely, 1997;Magliano, Trabasso, & Graesser, 1999;Noordmann & Vonk, 1992;Trabasso & Magliano, 1996;van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Hence, if readers fail to execute processes that integrate different portions of a text and to make inferences based on their general knowledge to elaborate on the text representation, they may fail to understand the text and have diffi culties in remembering it (Horiba, 2000;Linderholm & van den Broek, 2002;Long et al, 1997;Trabasso & Suh, 1993;Trabasso, Suh, Payton, & Jain, 1995).…”

Section: Inference and Reading Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inference making while reading narrative and expository texts: an ERP study

Baretta¹,

Tomitch²,

MacNair³

et al. 2009

Psychol. Neurosci. (Online)

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Much of the recent research on discourse comprehension has centered on the readers' ability to construct coherent mental representations of texts. In order to form a unifi ed representation of a given text, a reader must be able to join the information presented in the text with his/her background knowledge to construe the meaning that may not be explicitly stated, through the generation of inferences. In this study, the process of inference making by native speakers of English while reading two different types of text was investigated using electroencephalography (EEG). Subjects read narrative and expository paragraphs, and judged the plausibility of the fi nal sentence of each four-sentence long paragraph by reference to the previous information. The analysis of data focused on the N400 component and on accuracy of behavioral responses. N400 amplitudes revealed that exposition was more demanding than narration in terms of semantic processing, whereas the behavioral data showed that subjects were more prone to generate inferences when reading exposition. Overall, this study suggests that these two types of text are processed differently by the brain, as revealed by the changes in the N400 component across the last sentences of the paragraphs.

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Inference Processes: Integrating Relevant Knowledge and Text Information

Cited by 24 publications

References 33 publications

How do readers handle incorrect information during reading?

How do readers handle incorrect information during reading?

Language-Driven Spatiotemporal Causal Integration in the Prefrontal and Premotor Cortices

Inference making while reading narrative and expository texts: an ERP study

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