This project deals with cognitive processes in reading comprehension. The project's long-term is to investigate the way in which readers extract the meaning of a text as they read it in real time.
The specific aim i s to examine the integration of information from successive sentences of a text. It is assumed that intersentence integration requires a cognitive effort for the reader, thus resulting in a brief reading pause. The difficulty of intersentence integration and the length of the reading pause should depend on the attributes of the new information contributed by a sentence and on the availability of antecedent information from prior sentences. Three specific problems of intersentence integration are investigated. The first problem concerns the location of intersentence integration in the input stream of the text. The second problem concerns the influence of the text structure on intersentence integration. The third problem addresses integration strategies pursued by readers instructed to read at a fast vs. slow overall reading rate. The project uses a subject-paced computer-based reading method with word reading time as a dependent variable in addition to two measures of comprehension, recall accuracy and accuracy in answering questions. The measures are collected in four experiments for various text types, task conditions, and reader groups. The research is significant for the following three reasons: (1) It examines theoretical processes involved in the creation of a text representation in the reader's memory. (2) The integration processes are investigated in a real-time reading situation rather than in a paradigm that yields only the outcome of the comprehension process. (3) The project has practical significance because individual differences of intersentence integration are investigated. Comparison of the reader profiles of different groups will enable the discovery of efficient integration strategies. This is the foundation for methods of teaching readers to integrate sentences more effectively.
| Haberlandt, K F; Graesser, A C; Schneider, N J (1989) Reading strategies of fast and slow readers. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 15:815-23 |
| Haberlandt, K; Graesser, A C (1989) Processing of new arguments at clause boundaries. Mem Cognit 17:186-93 |
