On-line processing of topic structure by children and adults

doi:10.1016/0022-0965(87)90052-X

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology

Volume 43, Issue 1, February 1987, Pages 81-95

https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(87)90052-X Get rights and content

Abstract

A recent model of text processing proposed that adults construct a representation of topics during reading; a new topic is related to the representation as soon as relevant information is encountered. The present experiment tested the generality of this model for younger readers. Fourth- and sixth-grade children and college students read two hierarchically organized expository texts while reading times were recorded for initial topic sentences and specific nontopic sentences. Across ages, the major findings were (1) topic sentence reading times were shorter if a transition question informed the reader of the next topic; (2) topic sentence reading times were shorter if the new topic was directly related to the immediately preceding topic than if it was not directly related. Reading times for nontopic sentences were not affected by these manipulations. Reading times decreased as age increased, but text structure manipulations had very similar effects at all ages. The results are consistent with the general model, indicating that even young readers identify and relate expository text topics as they read.

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Updating emotional information in daily language comprehension: The influence of topic shifts
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Citation Excerpt :
Topic serves to enhance cognitive prominence (Cowles, Walenski, & Kluender, 2007) and has a privileged cognitive status relative to other sentential entities in constraining the upcoming information (Xu & Zhou, 2015). Numerous studies on discourse comprehension have emphasized topic structure, which describes the relation between sentence topics (generally topic-maintained and topic-shifted) as a significant discourse structure that affects language comprehension (e.g., Anderson, Garrod, & Sanford, 1983; Katherine S. Binder, 2003; Katherine S Binder & Morris, 1995; Hoeks, Vonk, & Schriefers, 2002; Hung & Schumacher, 2012, 2014; Hyönä, 1994, 1995; Lorch, Lorch, & Mogan, 1987; Lorch Jr, Lorch, & Matthews, 1985; Lorch Jr, Lorch, & Mogan, 1987a, b; Murray & McGlone, 1997; O'Brien, Duffy, & Myers, 1986; Xu & Zhou, 2015; Yang, Chen, Chen, Xu, & Yang, 2013). Earlier studies on text comprehension (Hyönä, 1994, 1995; Lorch et al., 1987; Lorch Jr et al., 1985) found that reading times for topic-shifted sentences were longer than for topic-maintained sentences.
Tracking and updating emotional information in daily language use is essential for successful comprehension and communication. Using an event-related potential technique, we investigated how the updating of emotional information was influenced by changes in topic with two-pair conversational discourses. The first pair established a topic and a kind of emotional information. The second pair either maintained or changed the topic of the first pair. The description of the topic within the second pair contained a critical word that either maintained or shifted the emotional valence of the first pair. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for both the topic words and the emotion words. We found that the topic-shifted words elicited a larger P2, a larger N400, and a larger late positive component (LPC) than the topic-maintained words. More importantly, we found that emotion updating elicited an enhanced sustained N400 in the topic-maintained discourses. On the other hand, emotion updating induced a pronounced LPC in the topic-shifted discourses. These results suggest that topic shift captures more cognitive resources for its own processing and new substructure building, which further affects the processing of emotion updating. Our findings demonstrated an active use of topic information in guiding emotion updating during natural language comprehension.
Effects of topic headings on text processing: Evidence from adult readers' eye fixation patterns
2004, Learning and Instruction
Effects of topic headings on the processing of multiple-topic expository texts were examined with the help of readers’ eye fixation patterns. Adult participants read two texts, one in which topic shifts were signaled by topic headings and one in which topic headings were excluded. The presence of topic headings facilitated the processing of topic sentences and increased the number of topics mentioned in the text summaries written after reading the texts. The facilitatory effect of headings was reflected both in the fixations made during the first-pass reading as well as in the later look-backs directed to the topic sentences. A framework is outlined to depict the process of reading and comprehending multiple-topic expository texts.
Cognitive skills and young children's comprehension of television
1991, Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology
The relation between young children's visual and verbal skills and their comprehension of an age-appropriate narrative television program was assessed. Forty-four children, aged 5 years, 3 months to 5 years, 9 months, were individually tested with 6 subscales from a comprehensive standardized intelligence test. Their comprehension of the central and incidental events, and of inferences from a 35-min narrative TV program, was also individually tested within 2 weeks of the intelligence testing. Verbal skills accounted for 42% of the variance in children's comprehension of the central events from the program. Verbal skills were also related to selectivity of memory for central versus incidental events. Visual short-term memory skills accounted for 20% of the variance in their comprehension of incidental events. It was suggested that children with high verbal skills have more capacity available for the processing of information relevant to the centrality of televised events.
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The facilitation of eye movements was studied in two experiments involving a repeated reading paradigm. A text was read three times. Initial reading was immediately followed by the first repetition; the second repetition took place one week later. Recall task instructions were used to encourage a detailed reading of the text. The data were analysed sentence by sentence from the ‘first pass’ readings not including returns to earlier text locations. A general facilitation for all eye movement parameters was found. Repetition decreased the summed fixation time, the average fixation duration, the number of progressive fixations, and the number of regressions. Additionally, repetition increased saccade lengths. Experiment 2 further qualified the general facilitatory effect. The middle section of the text, being the most dense of information, was devoted the most visual attention by the readers. Moreover, it was also found to produce the largest degree of facilitation due to repetition. This was true with all other eye movement parameters except saccade length and average fixation duration. Average fixation durations were longer in the beginning of a text than in the end. This was true in all the three readings. Similarly, for each reading, highly important sentences received more visual attention than unimportant sentences.
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On-line processing of topic structure by children and adults

Abstract

Child Development

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Journal of Memory and Language

Child Development

Journal of Educational Psychology

Expository paragraph properties that influence literal recall

Journal of Reading Behavior

Structural components of reading time and recall for sentences embedded in narratives: Changes with age and reading ability

Recognition, reconstruction, and recall of narrative sequences by preoperational children

Child Development

The effects of experience on the selection of suitable retrieval cues for studying texts

Child Development

Developmental trends in the abstraction and recall of relevant versus irrelevant thematic information from connected verbal materials

Child Development

Children's understanding of intersentence organization in the recall of short descriptive passages

Journal of Educational Psychology

Children's developing awareness of text structures in expository materials

Journal of Educational Psychology

Children's detection and awareness of textual anomaly

Journal of Experimental Child Psychology