Stephen W. Briner

Textual Signatures: Identifying Text-Types Using Latent Semantic Analysis to Measure the Cohesion of Text Structures

Just as a sentence is far more than a mere concatenation of words, a text is far more than a mere concatenation of sentences. Texts contain pertinent information that co-refers across sentences and paragraphs [30]; texts contain relations between phrases, clauses, and sentences that are often causally linked [21], [51], [56]; and texts that depend on relating a series of chronological events contain temporal features that help the reader to build a coherent representation of the text [19], [55]. We refer to textual features such as these as cohesive elements, and they occur within paragraphs (locally), across paragraphs (globally), and in forms such as referential, causal, temporal, and structural [18], [22], [36]. But cohesive elements, and by consequence cohesion, does not simply feature in a text as dialogues tend to feature in narratives, or as cartoons tend to feature in newspapers. That is, cohesion is not present or absent in a binary or optional sense. Instead, cohesion in text exists on a continuum of presence, which is sometimes indicative of the text-type in question [12], [37], [41] and sometimes indicative of the audience for which the text was written [44], [47]. In this chapter, we discuss the nature and importance of cohesion; we demonstrate a computational tool that measures cohesion; and, most importantly, we demonstrate a novel approach to identifying text-types by incorporating contrasting rates of cohesion.

Contributions of Self-Explanation to Comprehension of High- and Low-Cohesion Texts

This study examined how the contribution of self-explanation to science text comprehension is affected by the cohesion of a text at a local level. Psychology undergraduates read and self-explained a science text with either low or high local cohesion. Local cohesion was manipulated by the presence or absence of connectives and referential words or phrases that explicitly link successive sentences. After the self-explanation activity, participants answered open-ended comprehension questions about the text. Participants in the high local cohesion condition produced higher quality explanations, including more local bridging self-explanations, than those in the low local cohesion condition. However, these explanations, although higher in quality, did not improve comprehension. Performance on text-based comprehension questions was better in the low local cohesion condition. In addition, the correlation between self-explanation quality and comprehension performance was generally higher in the low local cohesion condition compared to the high local cohesion condition, even after factoring out participants level of topic-relevant knowledge. These data suggest that the contribution of self-explanation to comprehension is larger when the text lacks certain cues that facilitate making connections between successive ideas in a text. Further, the results imply that a key contribution of self-explanation to text comprehension is to induce active inference processes whereby readers fill in conceptual gaps in challenging texts.

Comparing Comprehension Measured by Multiple-Choice and Open-Ended Questions

This study compared the nature of text comprehension as measured by multiple-choice format and open-ended format questions. Participants read a short text while explaining preselected sentences. After reading the text, participants answered open-ended and multiple-choice versions of the same questions based on their memory of the text content. The results indicated that performance on open-ended questions was correlated with the quality of self-explanations, but performance on multiple-choice questions was correlated with the level of prior knowledge related to the text. These results suggest that open-ended and multiple-choice format questions measure different aspects of comprehension processes. The results are discussed in terms of dual process theories of text comprehension.

Processing Causality in Narrative Events: Temporal Order Matters

To successfully comprehend narrative text, readers often make inferences about different causes and effects that occur in a text. In this study, participants read texts in which events related to a cause were presented before an effect (i.e., the forward causal condition), texts in which an effect was presented before the events related to a cause (i.e., the backward causal condition), or control (i.e., the non-causal) texts. Lexical decision response times to cause-relevant words were faster in the forward causal condition than in the control condition and were faster in the backward causal condition than in the control condition. Importantly, response times were faster in the forward causal condition than in the backward causal condition. These effects were unrelated to individual differences in reading ability. These results suggest that readers process causal relations regardless of temporal order but that causal events presented in backward temporal order may be processed more slowly compared to causal events presented in forward temporal order.

Hemispheric processing of idioms: The influence of familiarity and ambiguity

Abstract Recent findings suggest that the right hemisphere plays a key role when readers comprehend figurative language. However, it is currently unclear how specific types of figurative language, such as idioms (e.g., “to bury the hatchet”), are processed in the right and left cerebral hemispheres. Prior research suggests that a readers previous exposure to an idiomatic phrase (i.e., the level of familiarity) and the plausibility of an idiom (i.e., the level of ambiguity) influence how idioms are processed. To investigate how familiarity influences the hemispheric processing of idioms (Experiment 1), participants read texts containing familiar or less familiar idioms and made lexical decisions to related target words presented to the left visual field-right hemisphere or to the right visual field-left hemisphere. To investigate how ambiguity influences the hemispheric processing of idioms (Experiment 2), participants read texts containing high or low ambiguity idioms and completed a lexical decision task to related target words presented to each visual field-hemisphere. For both familiar and less familiar idioms, greater facilitation was evident in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere. Additionally, greater facilitation was evident in the left hemisphere for low ambiguity idioms than for high ambiguity idioms, and greater facilitation was evident in the right hemisphere for high ambiguity idioms than for low ambiguity idioms. These findings suggest that the right hemisphere has an advantage when readers process ambiguous idioms, whereas the left hemisphere has an advantage when readers process low ambiguity idioms, and both familiar and less familiar idioms.

Would a madman have been so wise as this?” The effects of source credibility and message credibility on validation

Readers rapidly check new information against prior knowledge during validation, but research is inconsistent as to whether source credibility affects validation. We argue that readers are likely to accept highly plausible assertions regardless of source, but that high source credibility may boost acceptance of claims that are less plausible based on general world knowledge. In Experiment 1, participants read narratives with assertions for which the plausibility varied depending on the source. For high credibility sources, we found that readers were faster to read information confirming these assertions relative to contradictory information. We found the opposite patterns for low credibility characters. In Experiment 2, readers read claims from the same high or low credibility sources, but the claims were always plausible based on general world knowledge. Readers consistently took longer to read contradictory information, regardless of source. In Experiment 3, participants read modified versions of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” which was narrated entirely by an unreliable source. We manipulated the plausibility of a target event, as well as whether high credibility characters within the story provided confirmatory or contradictory information about the narrator’s description of the target event. Though readers rated the narrator as being insane, they were more likely to believe the narrator’s assertions about the target event when it was plausible and corroborated by other characters. We argue that sourcing research would benefit from focusing on the relationship between source credibility, message credibility, and multiple sources within a text.

Hemispheric processing of mental representations during text comprehension: Evidence for inhibition of inconsistent shape information

To successfully understand a text, readers often mentally represent the shape of an object described in a text (e.g., creating a mental image of a sliced tomato when reading about a tomato on a pizza). However, it is currently unclear how the cerebral hemispheres contribute to these mental images during reading. In the current study, participants were presented with sentences consistent with the shape of an object (i.e., the match condition), sentences inconsistent with the shape of an object (i.e., the mismatch condition), or sentences that did not specify the shape of an object (i.e., the neutral condition). Participants read each sentence and then viewed an image of an object that was quickly presented to either the right visual field-left hemisphere (rvf-LH) or the left visual field-right hemisphere (lvf-RH). Results indicate that when the shape of an object was implicitly described in the text (in Experiment 1), response times for images presented to the rvf-LH were longer in the mismatch condition than in the neutral or match conditions. However, no response time differences were evident in the lvf-RH. When the shape of an object was explicitly described in the text (in Experiment 2), response times were longer in the mismatch condition than in the neutral and match conditions in both hemispheres. Thus, hemispheric involvement in mental representation depends on how explicit information is described in a text. Furthermore, these findings suggest that readers inhibit information that does not match an object׳s shape described in a text.

Hemispheric Processing in Conventional Metaphor Comprehension: The Role of General Knowledge

ABSTRACT This study explored the relation between general knowledge and the hemispheric processing of metaphoric expressions in college age students. We hypothesized that prior knowledge influences how the hemispheres process metaphors in these individuals. In this study, 97 young (college‐aged) adults completed a general knowledge and vocabulary test, and were then divided into high‐knowledge/high‐vocabulary and low‐knowledge/low‐vocabulary groups. Next, participants viewed word pairs consisting of conventional metaphors, novel metaphors, word pairs with a literal meaning, and unrelated word pairs. The first word in each pair was presented centrally, and the second was presented to the right visual field‐left hemisphere (rvf‐LH) or the left visual field‐right hemisphere (lvf‐RH), and participants indicated whether each pair was a meaningful expression. Accuracy results showed an interaction between general knowledge and visual‐field hemisphere. Low‐knowledge participants were more accurate for metaphors presented to the rvf‐LH than the lvf‐RH, whereas high‐knowledge participants showed no accuracy differences between the hemispheres. We also found an interaction between vocabulary and visual field‐hemisphere for conventional metaphors. Specifically, low‐vocabulary participants showed a left‐hemisphere accuracy advantage, but high‐vocabulary participants showed similar accuracy patterns in both hemispheres. These results suggest that young adult readers who have more general knowledge process conventional metaphors similarly in both hemispheres, whereas young adult readers who have less general knowledge may rely more heavily on left‐hemisphere processes during conventional metaphor comprehension. HIGHLIGHTSWe used the divided visual field technique to present metaphors to the right and left hemispheres.Participants were divided into high‐ and low‐knowledge groups.High knowledge groups showed similar accuracy for metaphors in both hemispheres.Low knowledge group showed left‐hemisphere bias for metaphor accuracy.Results suggest relationship between general knowledge and hemispheric processing of metaphors.