chapter 11 discourse and inference Flashcards
(25 cards)
proposition
- core meaning of a sentence as expressed by its linguistic content
- bare bones
- interface of sentence and reps of reality
- captures real world event or situation that would have to occur in order for the sentence to be true
mental aka ___ models
- situational
- detailed conceptual reps of real world situations that are evoked by lang
what happens when probe words are negated
ppl are slower to respond to if it was in the sentence
study about sweatshirt and connection to main character
- in both times, added or taken away from character, past response to probe (sweatshirt)
- when sweatshirt was taken away from the main character, the memory fades quicker
- can be bc ppl make mental models of person w a sweatshirt
mental models and temporal locations
- when a sentence (one hour/one day later) was added, the longer time passed, the longer people took to respond to the action described prior to the time jump
- also, when a long break in introed between events, it becomes harder to integrate events in a mental model
content related to a character’g goals becomes ___ if the goal has been satisfied
less accessible (lack of closure leads to stronger memory for unresolved elements)
by an estimate, it can take up to ___ for people to generate a detailed image of an object
3 seconds
which will be harder for people to see the difference of:
1) Three turtles rested on a floating log, and a fish swam beneath them./ Three turtles rested on a floating log, and a fish swam
beneath it.
2) Three turtles rested beside a floating log, and a fish swam
beneath them./ Three turtles rested beside a floating log, and a fish swam beneath it
1, they have the same mental model whereas 2 has different
examples of phenomena that rely on preserving information about linguistic
form in long-term memory
- tracking the transitional probabilities of
syllables in order to segment words - learning the most probable ways of
completing a temporary syntactic ambiguity - being primed by a
previous bit of syntactic structure so that you’re more likely to later reuse
that same structure
reading comprehension is not just about understanding the words, but also what?
general world knowledge
bridging inferences
inference that connects some of the content in a sentence with previous material in the text or with info encoded in mental models
causal and referential inferences
causal: cause and effect, sentences are integrated
referential: has a point of reference
presupposition
implicit assumption that is signaled by specific linguistic expressions and whose existence or truth is taken for granted as background info
accommodation
process of updating a mental model to include info that is presupposed by a speaker as evident by their use of specific presupposition-triggering expressions
wording it as did you see ___ stop sign made more people say yes
the instead of a
questions containing presuppositions led subjects to falsely remember objects in a scene at a rate of ______ %
10-40%, worse with more time between presupposition and memory test
elaborative inferences
inferences that are not required in order to make a discourse coherent but that enrich the meanings of sentences to include material not explicitly encoded on the linguistic content of the sentence
predictive inference
elaborative inference that involves making predictions about the likely outcome of an event described by a sentence
predictions are driven by ___ thinking
wishful (desired outcomes are predicted)
likelihood of making an inference seems to reflect the combo of its ___ and ____
accessibility (processing cost) and available processing resources
reverse cohesion effect
under circumstances, readers retains more info from a text in which coherence relations between sentences are not made explicit and must be inferred
- harder text = need to activate knowledge base
analogical reasoning
comparative reasoning where similarities between conceptual structures are aligned and highlighted while other irrelevant properties or relations are disregarded
how are metaphors processed
in parallel with ‘normal’ meaning not after failure of it
kintsch view on metaphores
- its an extreme case of ramming together two words from different semantic domains that rarely occur together
- leads to suppression of info that is usually activated by these words in usually context and boost of info that usually would be weak
