Discourse Comprehension Research Articles

The effect of congruent emotional context on semantic memory during discourse comprehension

ABSTRACT This study examined the effect of emotional context on the semantic memory of subsequent emotional words during discourse comprehension in two eye-tracking experiments. Four-sentence discourses were used as experimental materials. The first three sentences established an emotional or neutral context, while the fourth contained an emotional target word consistent with the preceding emotional context's valence. The discourses were presented twice using the text change paradigm, where the target words were replaced with strongly - or weakly-related words during the second presentation. Thus, four conditions were included in the present study: Emotional-strongly-related, Emotional-weakly-related, Neutral-strongly-related and Neutral-weakly-related. In Experiment 1, negative contexts and negative target words were used, whereas in Experiment 2, positive contexts and positive target words were used. The results revealed a semantic relatedness effect, whereby the strongly-related words have lower change detection accuracy, longer reading times and more fixations in both Experiments 1 and 2. Furthermore, across both experiments, the magnitude of the semantic relatedness effect was greater in the emotionally congruent contexts than in the neutral contexts. These results suggest that emotional context could increase efforts to change the discrimination of subsequent words and demonstrate an important role of emotional context on semantic memory during discourse processing.

Relevance of Prosodic Focus and Lexical Stress for Discourse Comprehension in Turkish: Evidence from Psychometric and Electrophysiological Data.

Prosody underpins various linguistic domains ranging from semantics and syntax to discourse. For instance, prosodic information in the form of lexical stress modifies meanings and, as such, syntactic contexts of words as in Turkish kaz-má "pickaxe" (noun) versus káz-ma "do not dig" (imperative). Likewise, prosody indicates the focused constituent of an utterance as the noun phrase filling the wh-spot in a dialogue like What did you eat? I ate----. In the present study, we investigated the relevance of such prosodic variations for discourse comprehension in Turkish. We aimed at answering how lexical stress and prosodic focus mismatches on critical noun phrases-resulting in grammatical anomalies involving both semantics and syntax and discourse-level anomalies, respectively-affect the perceived correctness of an answer to a question in a given context. To that end, 80 native speakers of Turkish, 40 participating in a psychometric experiment and 40 participating in an EEG experiment, were asked to judge the acceptability of prosodic mismatches that occur either separately or concurrently. Psychometric results indicated that lexical stress mismatch led to a lower correctness score than prosodic focus mismatch, and combined mismatch received the lowest score. Consistent with the psychometric data, EEG results revealed an N400 effect to combined mismatch, and this effect was followed by a P600 response to lexical stress mismatch. Conjointly, these results suggest that every source of prosodic information is immediately available and codetermines the interpretation of an utterance; however, semantically and syntactically relevant lexical stress information is assigned more significance by the language comprehension system compared with prosodic focus information.

Understanding discourse in face-to-face settings: The impact of multimodal cues and listening conditions.

In face-to-face contexts, discourse is accompanied by various cues, like gestures and mouth movements. Here, we asked whether the presence of gestures and mouth movements benefits discourse comprehension under clear and challenging listening conditions and, if so, whether this multimodal benefit depends on the communicative environment in which interlocutors are situated. In two online experiments, participants watched videoclips of a speaker telling stories, and they answered yes-no questions about the content of each story. The speaker in the videos was spontaneously gesturing (or kept her hands still) and was wearing a surgical mask (or had her lips visible). The experiments differed in the communicative environment. In Experiment 1, the speaker narrated stories in silence, whereas the listener (participants) heard them in clear or degraded speech conditions (analogous to watching the news on TV in a quiet or noisy café). In Experiment 2, the speaker narrated the stories once in silence and once while listening to background noise, and the listener heard them in clear or degraded speech condition, respectively (analogous to listening to a friend in a quiet or noisy café). Across the experiments, we found that cospeech gestures facilitated discourse comprehension regardless of the listening conditions or the presence of a mask. In contrast, mouth movements were primarily helpful in challenging listening conditions. These findings indicate that both cues matter to listeners but to a different extent. Moreover, we found that the multimodal benefit to comprehension was similar regardless of the communicative environment. Thus, this study demonstrates the importance of both cospeech gestures and mouth movements to discourse comprehension, offering insights into the dynamic interplay between these cues under different communicative environments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Discourse comprehension and referential processing: effects of contextual distance and semantic plausibility on presupposition processing

Discourse comprehension and referential processing: effects of contextual distance and semantic plausibility on presupposition processing

EXPRESS: Aging of lexical access in Chinese spoken word production: A picture-word interference study.

It remains unknown how language production processes decline with age. Using a picture-word interference task, the aim of this study was to investigate the influence of aging on lexical access, and the contributions of language-specific and domain-general factors to semantic, phonological, and orthographic effects in Chinese spoken word production. After controlling for years of education, language comprehension, and domain-general cognitive abilities, we found a larger semantic interference effect for older speakers than for younger speakers, while the phonological effect and orthographic effect were comparable for the two age groups, supporting the transmission deficit hypothesis. Furthermore, discourse comprehension and general cognitive abilities were found to contribute to the phonological effect in older adults, but not in younger adults. Our findings indicate that both language-specific factors and domain-general factors contribute to the aging of spoken word production together.

Grammatical Mechanism in Environmental Discourse: An Ecolinguistics Study of Voice, Nominalization and Metaphor

Against the backdrop of growing global attention to environmental issues, language, as a key tool for constructing environmental awareness, plays an indispensable role. This study explores the role of three grammatical structures, namely passive voice, active voice, and nominalization, in environmental discourse. Based on foregrounding theory, transitivity analysis, grammatical metaphor, and green grammar, this research conducts a case analysis of environmental discourse about various environmental topics, demonstrating how grammatical structures shape the transmission of information and the cognitive responses of recipients, particularly the articulation and comprehension of environmental topic discourse. The study ultimately aims to reveal how these grammatical structures collectively intensify the sense of urgency and responsibility associated with environmental issues for both sides of writers and readers.

Testing effect in L2 discourse comprehension: importance of retrieval-based learning

Testing effect in L2 discourse comprehension: importance of retrieval-based learning

Narrative Discourse Performance in Traumatic Brain Injury: Does Story Comprehension Predict Story Retelling?

Little is known about the relationship between discourse comprehension and production in traumatic brain injury (TBI), especially for spoken language. This study examined to what extent narrative discourse comprehension accounts for narrative discourse production outcomes (story grammar, story completeness). A secondary aim was to provisionally test an assumption of a discourse model, the structure building framework (SBF), that discourse comprehension and production share cognitive processes by investigating the strength of the relationship between them. Twenty-one individuals with TBI completed story comprehension and story retelling tasks. Discourse measures included the Discourse Comprehension Test, a picture story comprehension task, story grammar, and story completeness. Correlational and multiple regression analyses were performed using comprehension measures as predictors for production measures. There were significant moderate-to-large correlations between all comprehension and production measures. Comprehension measures approached but did not reach significance for predicting story grammar performance but strongly predicted story completeness outcomes. The story comprehension measures likely tapped content aspects of discourse more so than organization. Results provided support for a link between content-focused discourse comprehension measures and discourse production outcomes, which may have clinical implications for approaches to discourse intervention. Findings were interpreted as providing preliminary support for the SBF's claim that discourse production deploys the same processes involved in discourse comprehension. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.26338045.

What is said about #donateliver or #liverdonor? Reflexive thematic analysis of Twitter (X) posts from 2012 to 2022

BackgroundThere is sustained interest in understanding the perspectives of liver transplant recipients and living donors, with several qualitative studies shedding light on this emotionally charged subject. However, these studies have relied primarily on traditional semi-structured interviews, which, while valuable, come with inherent limitations. Consequently, there remains a gap in our comprehension of the broader public discourse surrounding living liver donation. This study aims to bridge this gap by delving into public conversations related to living liver donation through a qualitative analysis of Twitter (now X) posts, offering a fresh perspective on this critical issue.MethodsTo compile a comprehensive dataset, we extracted original tweets containing the hashtags “#donateliver” OR “#liverdonor”, all posted in English from January 1, 2012, to December 31, 2022. We then selected tweets from individual users whose Twitter (X) accounts featured authentic human names, ensuring the credibility of our data. Employing Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis approach, the study investigators read and analysed the included tweets, identifying two main themes and six subthemes. The Health Policy Triangle framework was applied to understand the roles of different stakeholders involved in the discourse and suggest areas for policy improvement.ResultsA total of 361 unique tweets from individual users were analysed. The major theme that emerged was the persistent shortage of liver donors, underscoring the desperation faced by individuals in need of life-saving liver transplants and the urgency of addressing the organ shortage problem. The second theme delved into the experiences of liver donors post-surgery, shedding light on a variety of aspects related to the transplantation process, including the visibility of surgical scars, and the significance of returning to physical activity and exercise post-surgery.ConclusionThe multifaceted experiences of individuals involved in the transplantation process, both recipients and donors, should be further studied in our efforts to improve the critical shortage of liver donors.

Exploring the multi-dimensional human mind: Model-based and text-based approaches

In this study, we conceptualize two approaches, model-based and text-based, grounded on mental models and discourse comprehension theories, to computerized summary analysis. We juxtapose the model-based approach with the text-based approach to explore shared knowledge dimensions and associated measures from both approaches and use them to examine changes in students' summaries over time. We used 108 cases in which we computed model-based and text-based measures for two versions of students' summaries (i.e., initial and final revisions), resulting in a total of 216 observations. We used correlations, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), and Linear Mixed-Effects models. This exploratory investigation suggested a shortlist of text-based measures, and the findings of the PCA demonstrated that both model-based and text-based measures explained the three-dimensional model (i.e., surface, structure, and semantic). Overall, model-based measures were better for tracking changes in the surface dimension, while text-based measures were descriptive of the structure dimension. Both approaches worked well for the semantic dimension. The tested text-based measures can serve as a cross-reference to evaluate students' summaries along with the model-based measures. The current study shows the potential of using multidimensional measures to provide formative feedback on students' knowledge structure and writing styles along the three dimensions.

Most challenging types of offline inferences for Chinese migrants when reading public notices in Spanish

Written discourse comprehension implies a complex inferential function. In this study, we analyse those inferences taking place after reading (so-called offline), known to be elaborative and complementary. Following a non-probabilistic convenience sampling, we carried out a qualitative, descriptive study with 30 Sino-speaking adult migrants living in Madrid. The POEM test (Ureña, Flores & Martín Leralta, under review) divided them in 3 equitative groups of initial, intermediate and advanced level. The objective was to identify the type of offline inferences most challenging for the participants when reading public notices in Spanish L2. The frequency of appearance in daily life of those notices and the level of proficiency were also analysed. Experts in inferences and in Spanish as a migration language validated the reading test. Results showed some relevant features of this reading profile and its didactic consequences to train the inferential skill.

Predicting the next sentence (not word) in large language models: What model-brain alignment tells us about discourse comprehension.

Current large language models (LLMs) rely on word prediction as their backbone pretraining task. Although word prediction is an important mechanism underlying language processing, human language comprehension occurs at multiple levels, involving the integration of words and sentences to achieve a full understanding of discourse. This study models language comprehension by using the next sentence prediction (NSP) task to investigate mechanisms of discourse-level comprehension. We show that NSP pretraining enhanced a model's alignment with brain data especially in the right hemisphere and in the multiple demand network, highlighting the contributions of nonclassical language regions to high-level language understanding. Our results also suggest that NSP can enable the model to better capture human comprehension performance and to better encode contextual information. Our study demonstrates that the inclusion of diverse learning objectives in a model leads to more human-like representations, and investigating the neurocognitive plausibility of pretraining tasks in LLMs can shed light on outstanding questions in language neuroscience.

Impact of Affective and Cognitive Variables on University Student Reading Comprehension

The problem of reading comprehension at the university level has not been sufficiently explored in the field of education research. Understanding written texts is an essential prerequisite for academic success during university. Consequently, reading comprehension challenges can influence the dropout rate at the university level. On the other hand, research has been conducted from a cognitive perspective, without considering affective variables such as reading motivation and its relationship with linguistic and psychological variables. In this study, five questionnaires were administered to a sample of 65 teaching students from different disciplines. The questionnaires dealt with linguistic dimensions such as reading comprehension, at lexical, textual, and discursive levels; psychological aspects such as reading motivation; and cognitive aspects such as working memory. The results obtained through bivariate and mediation analyses show the mediating role of vocabulary in reading comprehension and other cognitive and affective variables. In this context, working memory has a positive indirect effect on more explicit processing tasks in reading comprehension of long texts associated with discourse comprehension. Finally, intrinsic motivation has a positive indirect effect on reading fluency and also on the comprehension of short texts. It also correlates positively with vocabulary tasks. These results are relevant in order to establish a reading profile of university students who have reading comprehension problems, as found in this study.

Semantically Enriched Cross-Lingual Sentence Embeddings for Crisis-related Social Media Texts

Tasks such as semantic search and clustering on crisis-related social media texts enhance our comprehension of crisis discourse, aiding decision-making and targeted interventions. Pre-trained language models have advanced performance in crisis informatics, but their contextual embeddings lack semantic meaningfulness. Although the CrisisTransformers family includes a sentence encoder to address the semanticity issue, it remains monolingual, processing only English texts. Furthermore, employing separate models for different languages leads to embeddings in distinct vector spaces, introducing challenges when comparing semantic similarities between multi-lingual texts. Therefore, we propose multi-lingual sentence encoders (CT-XLMR-SE and CT-mBERT-SE) that embed crisis-related social media texts for over 50 languages, such that texts with similar meanings are in close proximity within the same vector space, irrespective of language diversity. Results in sentence encoding and sentence matching tasks are promising, suggesting these models could serve as robust baselines when embedding multi-lingual crisis-related social media texts. The models are publicly available at: https://huggingface.co/crisistransformers.

The effects of visuospatial working memory on older adults’ bridging inference processing in visual narrative comprehension

ABSTRACT This experiment employed viewing time methods to investigate the effects of individual differences in visuospatial working memory (VWM) on the processing of older adults’ bridging inferences in the understanding of visual narratives. The results showed that older adults could make bridging inferences in visual narrative processing, and that VWM had no significant effect on the generation of older adults’ bridging inferences in visual narrative comprehension. The findings of this study have the potential to enrich and advance the theories and models related to discourse comprehension and its inference processing, and they would have important implications for using visual media to facilitate training in inference processing.

The Maternal Health Literacy of South Asian Newcomer Mothers and Canadian-born Mothers: A Narrative Inquiry Using Propositional Analysis

Objective: First, this comparative analysis of comprehension aimed to guide care and assist with health education research and practice as indicated in mothers stories of learning. Second, this research aimed to determine the comprehension processes of participants by comparing and characterizing the quantity and quality of the concepts’ mothers use in their narratives. Maternal health literacy (MHL) allows mothers to apply health information across all healthcare settings to make decisions about their health. Comprehension and reasoning are essential MHL skills for applying health advice. Methods: Using narrative inquiry methodology and transformative learning theory as the lens, the comprehension processes of English-speaking South Asian Newcomer Mothers (SANMs) (n=7) were compared with those of English-speaking Canadian-born mothers (n=7). Through semi-structured interviews, the mothers discussed their comprehension of ultrasound examination preparation, health risk information, and shared decision making. Themes were identified using inductive thematic analysis, with two reviewers identifying latent themes concerning situational and sociocultural MHL practices. Then, excerpts were explicated using propositional analysis, which systematically identified the features of thought and behavior at an individual level, to identify semantic features of discourse comprehension as a form of methodological triangulation. Next, the narratives were quantified to identify latent patterns of comprehension processes, conceptual knowledge, and semantic discourse features. Results: The key findings indicated that mothers demonstrate MHL through reifying, posturing, and volition, and that all mothers engage in knowledge-building activities and experiential learning in their communities to learn relationally from each other. Conclusion: Ultimately, MHL empowers all mothers to become more engaged during medical appointments and in health decision making.

Connective Comprehension in Adults: The Influence of Lexical Transparency, Frequency, and Individual Differences

ABSTRACT The comprehension of connectives is crucial for understanding the discourse relations that make up a text. We studied connective comprehension in English to investigate whether adult comprehenders acquire the meaning and intended use of connectives to a similar extent and how connective features and individual differences impact connective comprehension. A coherence judgment study indicated that differences in how well people comprehend connectives depend on the lexical transparency but not on the frequency of the connective. Furthermore, individual variation between participants can be explained by their vocabulary size, nonverbal IQ, and cognitive reasoning style. Print exposure was not found to be relevant. These findings provide further insight into the factors that influence discourse processing and highlight the need to consider individual differences in discourse comprehension research as well as the need to examine a wider range of connectives in empirical studies of discourse markers.

The development of reading comprehension ability of Chinese Heritage Language (CHL) learners in Indonesia

This study investigates the evolution of reading comprehension abilities in Indonesian learners of the Chinese Heritage Language (CHL), by comparing their scores on the Chinese Proficiency Test, a test specifically designed for CHL learners. A total of 275 candidates, divided into early adolescent (Mage = 13.56), late adolescent (Mage = 15.78), and adult (Mage = 22.83) groups, were evaluated on four dimensions of reading comprehension: orthographic knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, and discourse comprehension. A detailed cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of these four dimensions was conducted across the three groups. The results indicate that horizontally, the order of the four dimensions is orthographic knowledge > vocabulary knowledge > syntactic awareness > discourse comprehension, with significant differences observed in all dimensions. During adolescence, orthographic knowledge is significantly higher than vocabulary knowledge, while in adulthood, vocabulary knowledge is significantly higher than syntactic awareness, and syntactic awareness is significantly higher than discourse comprehension. Longitudinally, reading comprehension abilities appear to stall across adolescence in three dimensions (vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, and discourse comprehension), with a decline in one dimension (orthographic knowledge) occurring in late adolescence. However, the adult group shows improvement in all four dimensions compared to the late adolescence group. Considering both longitudinal and cross-sectional results, the developmental order of reading skills in Indonesian CHL learners is orthographic knowledge, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, and discourse comprehension. The main developmental peak for orthographic knowledge to vocabulary knowledge occurs in adolescence, while the major developmental peak for vocabulary knowledge to syntactic awareness and for syntactic awareness to discourse comprehension occurs in adulthood. The results suggest that reading comprehension improves significantly upon reaching adulthood in Indonesian. By understanding the trajectory of reading comprehension abilities in Indonesian CHL learners, this study can provide effective suggestions for Indonesian CHL learners and educators, and may also serve as a reference for other heritage languages.

Abstract 123: Emotional Prosody and Facial Expressions Differentially Augment Comprehension of Discourse for Left and Right Hemisphere Stroke Survivors

Deficits in spoken discourse comprehension are common after left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) stroke. Thus, it is important to identify factors that facilitate comprehension and enhance communication between stroke survivors and their care partners. Emotional prosody and facial expression cues can facilitate comprehension, but this may depend on an intact RH. To determine if such cues are facilitatory to LH and RH stroke survivors, we compared discourse comprehension between the groups across 3 conditions. We hypothesized that RH participants would not benefit as much from these cues as LH participants due to concomitant impairments in recognition of prosody and facial expression. We assessed 72 stroke survivors within 3 months of unilateral ischemic stroke, including 40 LH (15 female; aged 62±13 yrs) and 32 RH (17 female; aged 68±10 yrs), and 29 healthy controls (19 female; aged 72±15 yrs). Participants listened to a series of recorded spoken descriptions of scenarios and selected 1 picture from 4 to match each scenario. Targets and foils were balanced across spatial positions. Each description was presented in 3 conditions: read with neutral prosody (Trial 1), read with emotional prosody (Trial 2), and read with emotional prosody + facial expressions (Trial 3, audio + video). If 100% accuracy was achieved on a trial, the next trial was not presented. We used a Kruskal-Wallace test and paired samples t -tests for analyses and corrected for multiple comparisons. Accuracy differed significantly between groups on Trial 1, H (2) = 26.68, p < .001. Controls achieved higher accuracy than LH ( p < .01) and RH participants ( p < .01). LH and RH participants did not differ, p = .51. LH participants achieved significant gains in accuracy from Trial 1 to 2 ( t (32) = 4.16, p = .001) and from Trial 1 to 3 ( t (32) = 5.49, p < .001), but not from Trial 2 to 3 ( t (32) = 1.79, p = .08). RH participants did not achieve significant gains in accuracy from Trial 1 to 2 ( t (23) = 1.59, p = .13), Trial 2 to 3 ( t (23) = 0, p = 1.0), or Trial 1 to 3 ( t (23) = 1.21, p = .24). To conclude, emotional prosody and facial expressions significantly improved discourse comprehension for LH but not for RH stroke survivors. Different/additional strategies to improve discourse comprehension after RH stroke are needed.

Comprehension priming in Chinese EFL learners' reflexive pronoun interpretation.

Reflexive interpretation is a pivotal aspect of discourse comprehension, which usually reveals consistent challenges for Chinese EFL learners. These learners often breach the locality constraint of reflexive pronouns, exhibiting a persistent tendency towards optional reflexive comprehension. Recent research has demonstrated the effectiveness of the priming technique in altering biases among L2 learners in anaphora resolution. However, no existing studies have investigated comprehension priming in the context of reflexive interpretation among Chinese EFL learners. This study addresses this gap by conducting a sentence comprehension experiment with 36 high school students to explore the potential of comprehension priming in modifying L2 learners' reflexive interpretation biases and examining the persistence of the priming effect. The findings reveal immediate and cumulative priming effects, with no discernible effect observed after 1 week. The results suggest that comprehension priming can occur universally, even without lexical overlap, previously assumed to be a prerequisite. While the priming effect lacks statistical significance after 1 week, there is a numerical increase in participants consistently interpreting the target structure correctly. Thus, comprehension priming emerges as an effective method for L2 learners to internalize more abstract linguistic rules. Further research on comprehension priming across diverse L2 populations and language structures is warranted.