Carl H. Frederiksen

The Cognitive Representation and Processing of Discourse: Function and Dysfunction

Natural language discourse, when viewed from a cognitive and psychological perspective, is a manifestation in extended natural language productions of conceptual representations and thought processes. A discourse reflects knowledge (of the writer or speaker as well as the reader or listener), purpose in communicating meaning through language, and the cognitive processes required to produce and comprehend knowledge and represent it as discourse. Thus, to a cognitive psychologist, discourse is viewed in terms of the knowledge and processes that generated it and that are required to understand it.

Cognitive processes in composing and comprehending discourse

Cognitive processes involved in literacy tasks are considered from a theoretical viewpoint that develops a unified account for both discourse production and comprehension. This approach identifies two broad categories of discourse processing. Framing processes produce a conceptual structure, or frame, for a text. Regulating processes access language structures, translating conceptual structure into a text for production, and regulating construction of the conceptual structure for comprehension. The approach leads to an analysis of constraints that apply to discourse production and comprehension tasks and to a methodology based on propositional analysis of texts for investigating discourse processes on such tasks. Preliminary results of research on childrens story production and comprehension indicate that framing processes are common to both types of tasks.

Learning to Reason through Discourse in a Problem-Based Learning Group *

Techniques of propositional analysis, analysis of conceptual structure and inferences, and frame analysis were applied to the discourse of a problem‐based learning group in medicine. The results provide evidence of (a) the coachs use of a differential diagnosis frame to organize the groups diagnostic inquiry procedures, (b) the coconstruction of explanatory case models linking causes to clinical symptoms through interactive discussion of the case, (c) processes of collaborative reasoning in evaluating alternative causal hypotheses for clinical evidence, and (d) a participation structure in which speakers made different contributions to the collaborative problem solving through their contributions to the conversation. The results show how the content of task‐oriented dialogue can be analyzed to reveal how participants in an interactive discussion of a clinical case use diagnostic inquiry procedures to coconstruct models of a case and reason to evaluate alternative causal hypotheses. The analysis provides...

The structure of the help-seeking process in collaboratively using a computer coach in problem-based learning

Research on help seeking with a computer coach providing on-demand help has not produced fully adequate models of the process from a cognitive perspective. The present study postulates a model of help seeking from a cognitive perspective and tests this model in a learning situation characterized as problem-based and computer-supported. The participants were 18 graduate students from the faculty of Education of a Canadian university. Their participation involved solving a complex problem in statistics, in pairs, with the help of a computer coach, the McGill statistics tutor. Analysis of the performance data was performed using directed probability graphs and the log-linear approach. Results show that the model is reflected in the data. Implications for the design of computer coaches and instructional situations are discussed.

Semantic Discourse Processing and Tutoring Systems for Second Language Learning

A stratified model of discourse comprehension and production is presented and its implications for second language learning are discussed. A distinction is made between language-specific syntactic and semantic processing at the sentence level, and nonanguage-specific conceptual and semantic processing at the discourse level. Results from studies of discourse comprehension in bilinguals that support this distinction are described. A computer model of semantic processing of sentences and its application to intelligent tutoring systems for developing syntactic and semantic processing skills in a second language are discussed. The problem of developing proficiency in applying discourse level conceptual and semantic processing to texts in the second language is considered.

A propositional analyst's assistant

A system (PAN) that is designed to assist both the inexperienced and the experienced user in performing propositional analysis is described. The system is implemented in UCSD Pascal on the Apple II and Apple He microcomputers.