Sentence Continuations Research Articles

Interactive processes in sentence comprehension and recognition

Two experiments examined the roles played by semantic and surface information in reading and recognizing sentences. Subjects read sentences in normal and inverted typography. Their recognition of meaning and other sentence features was tested using sentences whose typography, wording, and/or meaning were either the same as or different from that in the first set of sentences. In Experiment 1, subjects either read aloud or performed a sentence continuation task. For originally inverted sentences, recognition of meaning was high, irrespective of task demands. For originally normal sentences, recognition was low for Read Aloud subjects and high for Sentence Continuation subjects. Sentence recognition was affected by repetition of wording and typography. Experiment 2 replicated the results with the read aloud task and showed the second reading of originally inverted sentences to be equally swift for paraphrase and verbatim test forms. It was concluded that reading and recognition are interactive processes, involving conceptually driven and data driven operations. The interaction of operations may be either automatic or controlled. While processing of normal typography is automatic, inverted typography induces controlled processing, resulting in better retention. Furthermore, semantic and surface information are conceptualized as interacting components of comprehension and memory processes.

The role of inferences in discourse comprehension

This study examined how people use inferences to aid comprehension of connected discourse. Subjects were presented passages in which a target sentence was followed later in the passage by an experimentally controlled continuation sentence. A recognition test measured subjects' false alarm rates to equally plausible inferences from the target sentence. When the continuation sentence was unrelated to the inferences, false alarm probabilities were equal for the inferences. When comprehension of the continuation sentence depended on the target plus an inferential chain that included one of the inferences, false recognition rates for that inference were increased relative to the control condition. This suggests that people store in memory both explicitly stated information and inferences required for contextual integration of that information.