Verification of an Interactive Model of Text Comprehension: Linguistic Information, Text Difficulty, And Language (Polish And English)

Abstract

Abstract Interactive models of language comprehension are so powerful that they must be restricted if they are to have any explanatory value. The research reported in this chapter explored what sort of restrictions might be appropriate. Violations of linguistic information were introduced at specific points in three passages, easy narratives in Polish and English and a difficult exposition in Polish. Lexical, syntactic, semantic, and factual information were violated in separate manipulations. All violations produced disruptions in the oral productions of readers who read the passages aloud. A lexical access component and a sentence integration component could be distinguished clearly. Lexical, syntactic, and semantic violations disrupted lexical access and lexical, semantic, and factual disrupted sentence integration. Text difficulty had relatively smaller effect than language differences. Polish readers used a more focused reading strategy and English readers used a more diffused one. These results support an interactive model in general, but suggest certain restrictions on what information is available to the components and to what extent components are encapsulated.