The program of research is grounded in a model of language comprehension developed by the investigator, the Structure Building Framework (SBF), a model which is positioned in the general cognitive processes view of language, i.e., that language comprehension draws on general cognitive processes and mechanisms that are not uniquely configured for language. In this model, the goal of language comprehension is to build coherent mental representations or structures. Three component processes are involved: laying a foundation, mapping new information, and shifting representations. Two mechanisms control memory, those of suppression and enhancement. The earlier studies generated a number of important discoveries about the putative cognitive processes and mechanisms. This proposal plans to develop SBF further by investigating a series of experimental questions within each of the three processes and two mechanisms.
| Gernsbacher, Morton Ann (2014) Internet-Based Communication. Discourse Process 51:359-373 |
| Beeman, M J; Bowden, E M; Gernsbacher, M A (2000) Right and left hemisphere cooperation for drawing predictive and coherence inferences during normal story comprehension. Brain Lang 71:310-36 |
| Robertson, D A; Gernsbacher, M A; Guidotti, S J et al. (2000) Functional neuroanatomy of the cognitive process of mapping during discourse comprehension. Psychol Sci 11:255-60 |
| Faust, M E; Gernsbacher, M A (1996) Cerebral mechanisms for suppression of inappropriate information during sentence comprehension. Brain Lang 53:234-59 |
| Gernsbacher, M A; Jescheniak, J D (1995) Cataphoric devices in spoken discourse. Cogn Psychol 29:24-58 |
