Résumé
Dans un texte explicatif présenté à des sujets, on manipule deux types de marques d’importance: marque linguistique (phrase attirant l’attention sur le contenu de la phrase-cible qui la suit); marque paralinguistique (soulignement d’une partie de la phrase-cible). On mesure le temps de lecture (TL) consacré aux différentes phrases du texte. Le soulignement a un effet non seulement sur le TL de la phrasecible elle-même (allongé en cas de soulignement), mais aussi sur le TL de la marque linguistique d’importance qui la précède (plus court quand la phrase-cible est soulignée), et sur le TL de la phrase qui la suit (plus court quand il y a cumul des deux marques d’importance). Pour interpréter ces résultats, on se réfère au rôle joué par les marques d’importance dans l’activation de représentations de haut niveau (ici liées à une structure rhétorique particulière, l’analogie), dont les effets peuvent jouer de manière différée sur l’intégration de la suite du texte. On conclut à la nécessité de prendre en compte l’articulation entre les représentations pertinentes, les indices susceptibles d’activer ces représentations, et les procédés pouvant attirer l’attention du lecteur sur ces indices.
Abstract
An expository text is presented, in which two types of importance signals are manipulated: a linguistic signal (a sentence calling attention on the following target-sentence’s contents); a paralinguistic signal (underlining a part of the target-sentence). Reading times (RT) allocated to the various text sentences were measured. The underline affects not only RT for the target-sentence itself (increased in case of underline), but also RT for the preceding linguistic signal (shortened when the targetsentence is underlined), and RT for the following sentence (shortened when the two types of signals are simultaneously present). The interpretation of these results is grounded on the importance signals’ function in activating some high level representations (here bounded to a specific rhetorical structure: analogy), the effects of which can be delayed on the following sentence’s integration. The necessity is argued to take over the connection between relevant representations, marks likely to activate these representations, and devices likely to call reader’s attention on these marks.
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Cette recherche a été réalisée dans le cadre du Laboratoire de Psychologie du Langage associé au CNRS (URA no 666). Merci à Marie-Françoise Ballaire pour sa contribution à la réalisation de l’expérience.
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Gaonac’h, D., Passerault, JM. Marquage de l’importance et traitement des eléments dans un texte: Effets immédiat et différé. Eur J Psychol Educ 5, 59–68 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03172769
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03172769