Kintsch's Construction-integration Research Articles

Reading competence and its impact on writing: an approach towards mental representation in literacy tasks

BackgroundReading and writing are both fundamental activities for successful learning. However, little is known about the effect of reading comprehension performance on writing, as well as the pedagogical guidelines that can be drawn from this influence.MethodThus, the purpose of the present investigation was to examine the influence of performance in reading comprehension, distinguishing between poor and proficient readers (N = 105), who were enrolled in four eighth‐grade classes between the ages of 12 and 14, on the writing of narrative and expository texts.ResultsResults revealed that proficient readers outperformed poor readers on objective measures of text production and informative/expository texts. Additionally, regression models demonstrated that proficient readers relied more on deeper aspects of reading and writing such as inferential skills, whereas poor readers tended to focus on superficial aspects of texts, or what Kintsch referred to as text‐base, and appeared to perform better in reading and writing tasks related to narratives compared to information‐based, expository texts.ConclusionThese results support the theoretical perspectives of Kintsch's construction–integration model and Otero's regulation model regarding the relation between reading, writing and mental representations.

Challenges in Processes of Validation and Comprehension

ABSTRACTThere is accumulating evidence that readers continually evaluate the consistency, congruence, and coherence of text by processes of validation. Validation is initiated immediately on stimulus presentation, may proceed nonstrategically, and serves as a criterion for representational updating. However, validation exhibits a variety of deficiencies. Readers tend to overlook presupposed anomalies and are prone to both endorse text misinformation and to retain previously encoded misinformation. Here, several challenges concerning validation processing are considered against the backdrop of refinements of Kintsch's construction-integration model. Predictions about upcoming text might facilitate comprehension but demand validation. Conversely, the spillover of processing beyond the current text segment reflects processes subsequent to construction and integration and likely contributes to validation. This theoretical framework raises questions about the staging of comprehension processes and about their possible automaticity. Certain contemporary theories tend to highlight either the successes or deficiencies of validation, but they exhibit enough convergence to offer the promise of an effective analysis.

Promoting different reading comprehension levels through online annotations

Previous studies have evaluated reading comprehension as the general understanding of reading texts. However, this broad and generic assessment of reading comprehension overlooks the specific aspects and processes that students need to develop. This study adopted Kintsch's Construction–Integration model to tap into reading comprehension at different levels and investigated how English as a foreign language (EFL) students benefit from online annotations to scaffold reading comprehension. Fifty EFL students participated in this study and the data collected included (1) the pre- and post-test assessments in reading comprehension levels, (2) the students’ online annotations on reading texts, and (3) the discussion transcripts from an online discussion forum. The results from the first two data sources (1 and 2) were the data-sets used to investigate the influence of the annotation types on reading comprehension levels. The third data source was the data-set used to probe into the process of how students benefited from annotation types to reach different levels of reading comprehension. Four types of online annotations were frequently used by the students while reading online, including (1) marking vocabulary, (2) adding Chinese explanatory notes to unknown vocabulary, (3) marking text information, and (4) adding summary notes to each paragraph. Different frequencies of using the four types of online annotations resulted in three different comprehension levels: surface-based, text-based, and situation-based levels. Marking vocabulary and adding Chinese explanatory notes helped scaffold the students' learning to achieve surface comprehension levels to facilitate recognition and meaning of unknown vocabulary. Marking text information and in particular, the adding of summary notes to each paragraph were the core annotations that helped students comprehend the online text in text-based and situation-based levels. EFL teachers can guide students to use online annotations to different extents in order to deepen their reading comprehension.

Easy‐to‐read Texts for Students with Intellectual Disability: Linguistic Factors Affecting Comprehension

The use of 'easy-to-read' materials for people with intellectual disabilities has become very widespread but their effectiveness has scarcely been evaluated. In this study, the framework provided by Kintsch's Construction-Integration Model (1988) is used to examine (i) the reading comprehension levels of different passages of the Spanish text that have been designed following easy-to-read guidelines and (ii) the relationships between reading comprehension (literal and inferential) and various linguistic features of these texts. Sixteen students with mild intellectual disability and low levels of reading skills were asked to read easy-to-read texts and then complete a reading comprehension test. The corpus of texts was composed of a set of forty-eight pieces of news selected from www.noticiasfacil.es, a Spanish digital newspaper that publishes daily journalistic texts following international guidelines for the design of easy-to-read documents (IFLA, Tronbacke B. (1997) Guidelines for Easy-to-read Materials. IFLA, The Hague). Participants correctly answered 80% of the comprehension questions, showing significantly higher scores for literal questions than for inferential questions. The analyses of the texts' linguistic features revealed that the number of coreferences was the variable that best predicted literal comprehension, but contrary to what the previous literature seemed to indicate, the relationship between the two variables was inverse. In the case of inferential comprehension, the number of sentences was a significant negative predictor; that is, the higher the sentence density, the lower the ability of these students to find relationships between them. The effects of the rest of linguistic variables, such as word frequency and word length, on comprehension were null. These results provide preliminary empirical support for the use of easy-to-read texts but bring into question the validity of some popular design guidelines (e.g. augmenting word frequency) to optimally match texts and reading levels of students with intellectual disability. Two factors are suggested as contributing to the effect of sentence density on inferential comprehension: (i) long texts present higher conceptual density, so there are more ideas to store, retrieve and integrate, which increases the demand on inferential reasoning and (ii) long texts are perceived as difficult, which affects reading motivation and, consequently, induces passive reading strategies. The need for further research to elucidate the origin of our main findings with a larger and more heterogeneous sample of students with intellectual disability is highlighted.

Alma: An adaptive learning models environment from texts and activities that improves students’ science comprehension

This paper presents the Adaptive Learning Models from texts and Activities (ALMA) environment and the interaction of undergraduate students in Computer Science with it, while studying the learning goal “Computer Networks’ Principles”. The learning design of ALMA is based on Kintsch's Construction-Integration model for text comprehension and takes into account the learner's background knowledge in order to propose a text of appropriate cohesion from four versions of a text, orthogonally varying local and global cohesion. Learners’ comprehension is also supported and assessed through a series of activities such as a free text recall measure, case studies, activities of active experimentation, text-based, bridging-inference, elaborative-inference and problem-solving questions and a sorting task. Moreover, ALMA proposes a learning sequence according to students’ learning style; however students can set their own. Students interacted with the system and expressed their opinion about the course designed via ALMA which was very satisfactory.

A Connectionist Extension to Kintsch's Construction–Integration Model

This article proposes an extension to Kintsch's Construction–Integration (CI) model of text comprehension, which changes its mathematical implementation and emphasizes the connectionist features of the model. Specifically, the extension proposed here (a) simulates the learning process in a connectionist manner by making explicit changes in the connecting values among processing units; (b) takes into account individual differences in prior background knowledge activation and individual ability to make logical inferences, using these parameters to adjust the results of the simulation; and (c) implements an algorithm that constructs the connectivity matrix W from text processing. The proposed extension is tested on existing recall and contradiction-detection data from readers of science texts, and its predictions fit the empirical data better than the CI model's prediction.

Convergence of the Integration Dynamics of the Construction–Integration Model

The connectionist network corresponding to the nonlinear integration dynamical system associated with Kintsch's construction–integration (CI) model is analysed with linear algebra tools. This addresses some theoretical questions raised and left unanswered by Rodenhausen (1992, Psychological Review 99, 547–549). A mathematical characterization for equilibrium points, which allows an a priori enumeration of all possible asymptotic states for the integration dynamical system, given a connectivity matrix, is given. The dynamics of convergence of the integration dynamical system is characterized in some detail as well. This provides a tool for understanding CI simulations and helps in particular to let us know to what extent the outcome will depend on the initial conditions. The criteria also provide a new mathematical analysis which allows for the explicit calculation of asymptotic states of the integration process without requiring computer simulation experiments. The new mathematical analysis should facilitate comparisons of the model's predictions with behavioural data.

The Relationship between Prior Knowledge and Interactive Overviews during Hypermedia-Aided Learning

Advance organizers have been used successfully to augment the learning outcome for students engaged in traditional text-based learning [1] and those engaged in hypermedia-assisted learning [2]. Prior research has shown that this effect may occur because the organizer provides cues to prior knowledge which is then used as an elaborative tool for the new information [3]. Novices are uniquely challenged, however, in that they have little or no prior knowledge to aid in the learning process. The present study used interactive overviews (IOs), a type of advance organizer, to explore the effect of the interaction between organizer structure and prior knowledge on novices' ability to meet particular learning goals. Subjects were recruited who displayed some knowledge of animal family resemblances but very little about interspecies relationships within ecosystems on pretests. They were then asked to learn about a world of fictitious animals with the aid of a hypermedia program which provided an IO arranged either by animal families or ecosystems. They were also assigned the goal of learning about either animal families or ecosystems. Outcome measures focused on subjects' ability to meet their learning goals. Results indicated that the ecosystem IO aided learners in meeting an ecosystems learning goal, about which they had no prior knowledge. The effect was strong enough to produce incidental learning effects, as those assigned to learn about animal families also learned about ecosystems when exposed to the ecosystem IO. In the presence of prior animal family knowledge, however, the animal families IO had no facilitative effect. It is argued, though, that this may have been an epiphenomenon of the pretesting procedure which activated subjects' existing animal family knowledge. Results are discussed with reference to Kintsch's construction integration model as well as classroom application [4].

A Comprehension-Based Model of Exploration

The linked model of comprehension-based action planning and instruction taking (LICAI) simulates performing by exploration tasks using applications hosted on systems with graphical user interfaces. The tasks are given to the user as written exercises containing no information about the correct action sequences. LICAI's comprehension and action-planning processes are based on Kintsch's construction-integration (C-I) theory for text comprehension. The model assumes that comprehending instructions is a strategic process; instruction texts must be elaborated using specialized strategres that guide goal generation. LICAI comprehends the instructions and generates goals that are then stored in memory. The action-planning processes are controlled by goals retrieved from memory. Representations of goals that can guide exploration are restricted by the C-I architecture. The model predicts that successful exploration requires linking of the goal representation with the label on the correct object. The model is evaluated by comparing its predictions with results from an experimental study of learning by exploration by Franzke (1994, 1995). We discuss the implications of LICAI for designing instruction materials and interfaces that facilitate exploration.

Rapist or "Regular Guy": Explanatory Coherence in the Construction of Mental Models of Others

A model is presented of how people construct coherent representations of others. It integrates work on knowledge representations with Kintsch's construction-integration model of discourse comprehension and Thagard's model of explanatory coherence. A major claim is that parallel constraint satisfaction processes, fundamental to connectionist modeling, play a major role in the development of coherent representations. Several topics are examined: (a) the role of making goal inferences in trait inferences, (b) how people combine apparently inconsistent traits to arrive at a coherent impression, and (c) how this parallel process model can account for findings that have been given a serial interpretation in Trope's two-stage model of dispositional inference and Gilbert's work on cognitive busyness. It is argued that this model provides a more parsimonious but broader explanation for attributions than alternatives.