Discourse processing

Question 1

What is inferencing? + three types?

Answer 1

Integrating general knowledge and written words to provide a coherent account of sentences - without readers awareness.

Logical inferencing = depend on the meaning of words (widow = woman)

Bridging inference = establish coherence between the current part of text and preceding text

Elaborative inference = embellish or add details to the text by making use of our world knowledge

Question 2

Constructivist approach - Bransford, Barclay, Franks (1972) + implication

Answer 2

Readers construct relative complete words ‘mental model’ of situation and event referred to in text
Numerous elaborative inferences are drawn while reading

Question 3

Strength of the constructivist approach

Answer 3

+ Participants read sentences e.g., ‘three turtle rested on floating log, and fish swam beneath them.’
Inference the participants would make = the fish swam beneath the log
The test sentence ‘three turtles rested on floating log and fish swam beneath it’
Asked confidence level - was the sentence the same as the original?
Participants were equally confident when test sentence was presented or the original - indicating that participants made an inference
Inferences in text = stored in memory like actual information

Question 4

Weakness of the constructivist approach

Answer 4

Dooling and Christiaansen (1977)
Task - participants read story about ruthless dictator ‘Gerald Martin’
One week later they were given a test of recognition memory, and told just before that the dictator was actually Hitler
Findings - participants mistakenly ‘recognised’ sentences relevant to Hitler that had not appeared in the original story

Constructivist research was done using memory tests however memory tests have been seen to provide indirect measure of processes and may reflect reconstructed processes occurring during retrieval