Deck 11: Comprehension and Memory for Text

Question 1

When people read a story that does not contain a statement of the goal until the end of the story

A)they find the passage more memorable because it induces sudden insights about the solution to the mystery.
B)they rate the passage as significantly more suspenseful.
C)they recall significantly more details than those who were told the goal before given the reading passage.
D)they recall significantly less of the story than if the goal was made clear from the beginning of the story.

Answer 1

D

Question 2

Which of the following would be least helpful in establishing global coherence?

A)actions of the main character
C)causal connections relating goals
B)the plot of the story
D)ideas in the same paragraph

Answer 2

D

Question 3

The chapter on text comprehension emphasizes that two important components that influence comprehension are

A)sex and race.
B)grammar and spelling.
C)the knowledge of the reader and the content of the text.
D)capacity and arousal.

Answer 3

C

Question 4

Bransford and Johnson found that presenting a suitable context after people read an abstract passage

A)improved recall when the topic was unfamiliar (a serenade).
B)improved recall when the topic was familiar (washing clothes).
C)improved recall in both cases.
D)improved recall in neither case.

Question 5

People's inability to recall the abstract, unfamiliar statements in Bransford and Johnson's experiment illustrated the important role of prior knowledge in

A)comprehension.
C)predicting readability.
B)causing recall of false information.
D)providing a retrieval plan.

Question 6

False recall of information concerning a robbery increased when

A)the information was part of prior knowledge about robberies.
B)misleading information was introduced by an attorney.
C)Both a and b
D)Neither a nor b

Question 7

According to the story structure proposed by Thorndyke, the goal is specified in the story's

A)setting.
C)plot.
B)theme.
D)resolution.

Question 8

Prior knowledge

A)makes it easier to comprehend abstract ideas.
B)determines what we emphasize in a text.
C)can make it difficult to remember the source of our knowledge.
D)All these

Question 9

Information is more likely to be falsely recognized when

A)it matches the most recently activated memory trace in the transformational hierarchy.
B)it matches our knowledge of scripts.
C)immediate recognition is required.
D)the recognition threshold exceeds the magnitude of the sensory impression.

Question 10

Myers measured the effect of causal relations on the fan effect. He found that subjects were fastest in deciding whether test sentences were true or false when they learned

A)3 sentences.
B)6 high-integration sentences.
C)6 low-integration sentences.
D)there were no differences among these three conditions.

Question 11

Bower's results suggest that text information is easiest to remember when it

A)describes a common script activity.
C)interrupts the goal of the script.
B)describes an uncommon script activity.
D)is irrelevant to the script.

Question 12

According to Bower's findings which of the following should be least remembered after reading a story about going to a restaurant?

A)the color of the menu
C)waiting to be seated
B)eating the meal
D)leaving the tip

Question 13

Prior knowledge causes the greatest number of false recognitions of story content for

A)low-related sentences after a short delay.
C)low-related sentences after a long delay.
B)high-related sentences after a short delay.
D)high-related sentences after a long delay.

Question 14

Which of the following sequences should you use to create good comprehension of a narrative story?

A)setting, plot, resolution
C)setting, theme, plot, resolution
B)setting, plot, resolution, theme
D)all are equally good.

Question 15

Anderson and Pichert argued that people recalled additional ideas following a shift in perspective because they

A)guessed ideas that they didn't really remember.
B)initially omitted these ideas as being unimportant.
C)had a new plan for searching memory.
D)always did better when given a second opportunity.

Question 16

According to Thorndyke (1977), story structure consists of all except which of the following?

A)setting
C)obstacle
B)theme
D)resolution

Question 17

Anderson and Pichert found that asking people to shift perspectives increased

A)comprehension.
C)false recognitions.
B)reading time.
D)retrieval.

Question 18

Speed reading

A)never works.
B)works fine for simple or already known material.
C)works well for both simple and complex material.
D)works best for students trying to learn new material.

Question 19

Causal connections in a text determine

A)what people recall.
B)what people would include in a summary.
C)how quickly people can retrieve information.
D)All these

Question 20

According to Gernsbacher's (1997) Structure Building Framework, which sentence of a paragraph do people usually read most slowly, and why?

A)the first, because they are laying a foundation for the ideas that follow
B)the last, because they are integrating the meanings of the individual statements
C)the first, because they are adjusting their comprehension to the difficulty-level and style of the author
D)the last because it summarizes information in the preceding sentences

Question 21

Kintsch introduced the notion of a situation model in order to

A)create a local semantic network specific to the current situation.
B)reduce the syntactic complexity to the minimum level necessary to reduce processing load.
C)use language as a set of instructions for constructing a mental representation of the situation.
D)filter out irrelevant details to focus on global integration.

Question 22

According to Kintsch's model of comprehension, how many propositions can be kept active in STM?

A)three
C)seven
B)five
D)nine

Question 23

Comprehension is influenced by whether the reader can

A)relate newly acquired information to ideas previously expressed in the text.
B)use STM rather than LTM to establish relations.
C)directly establish rather than infer relations.
D)All these

Question 24

Propositions in Kintsch's model of comprehension divide the text into

A)individual words.
B)meaningful units consisting of several words.
C)goal statements and nongoal statements.
D)noun phrases and verb phrases.

Question 25

According to Kintsch's model of comprehension, text can be represented as a semantic network consisting of

A)individual words.
C)grammatical phrases.
B)meaning-based propositions.
D)sentences.

Question 26

Which is a recommended comprehension strategy?

A)predict
C)summarize
B)question
D)all of the above

Question 27

Kintsch defined readability as

A)number of recalled propositions + reading time.
B)number of recalled propositions - reading time.
C)number of recalled propositions x reading time.
D)number of recalled propositions ÷ reading time.

Question 28

Text difficulty is a function of

A)need for inferences.
C)word frequency.
B)reinstatement searches.
D)All these

Question 29

In the sentence "The playful cat perched alertly before pouncing on a grasshopper," the term the playful cat is an example of

A)the need to perform a reinstatement search.
B)a proposition.
C)an inference.
D)a verb phrase.

Question 30

Kintsch found that the readability of a paragraph is primarily determined by

A)sentence length and word frequency.
B)word frequency and the number of reinstatement searches.
C)sentence length and the number of inferences.
D)the number of reinstatement searches and sentence length.

Question 31

Britton applied Kintsch's model to improve the readability of an article on the Air War in North Vietnam by reducing

A)the number of sentences.
C)the number of reinstatement searches.
B)the length of sentences.
D)the number of inferences.

Question 32

A situation model is constructed from

A)prior knowledge.
B)text information.
C)Both prior knowledge and text information
D)Neither prior knowledge nor text information

Question 33

Comprehension is easiest when information in the story is

A)directly related to previous information stored in STM.
B)directly related to previous information stored in LTM.
C)indirectly related (requiring an inference) to information in STM.
D)indirectly related to information in LTM.

Question 34

A study on readers' goals found that in contrast to readers who were told they were reading an article of general interest, readers who were told that they were studying for an essay exam made more

A)inferences.
B)evaluative statements.
C)Both inferences and evaluative statements
D)Neither inferences nor evaluative statements.

Question 35

Trabasso and Sperry (1985) found that, when subjects rated the importance of events in stories, the judged importance of an action was directly related to

A)its position in the paragraph.
B)the number of explicit references to it in the passage.
C)the importance of the character in the story who committed the action.
D)the number of causal connections associated with the action.

Question 36

Training on iSTART revealed that answering questions requiring integrative inferences was the best training for students with questions more accurately.

A)low-knowledge
C)Both low and high-knowledge
B)high-knowledge
D)Neither low nor high-knowledge

Question 37

When Lesgold inserted two irrelevant sentences (about a bee in the car) into a text, it took longer to comprehend the final sentence because it

A)could no longer be related.
B)required an inference to be related.
C)required a reinstatement search to be related.
D)required expert knowledge to be related.

Question 38

Kieras demonstrated the usefulness of being able to build directly on old information by contrasting memory for two paragraphs that differed in

A)the content of the sentences.
C)the familiarity of the sentences.
B)the order of the sentences.
D)the number of sentences.

Question 39

Which of the following does not belong with regard to facilitating integration of details?

A)continuity of ideas from one sentence to the next
B)maintaining ideas in working memory
C)using inferences to connect ideas
D)All these facilitate comprehension.

Question 40

Speed reading is a good way to learn a large amount of new information.

Question 41

Describe how you could incorporate the nine recommended comprehension strategies into your own methods of learning.

Question 42

A reader's prior knowledge can determine the ease of making inferences.

Question 43

What advantages do you think that Kintsch's model might have for you personally over the many other readability formulas?

Question 44

How does prior knowledge facilitate comprehension? How does it hinder it? Provide concrete examples of both.

Question 45

Readability of a text is the number of recalled propositions divided by reading time.

Question 46

Scripts influence what a person emphasizes when he or she reads a text.

Question 47

How does reading speed effect comprehension? Do speed reading courses work for all situations?

Question 48

One of the determinants of comprehension difficulty is whether the ideas in a sentence were given in a previous sentence.

Question 49

When it comes to comprehension of text, there are two important factors: the knowledge of the reader and the content of the text.

Question 50

Causal relations interfere with text comprehension.

Question 51

Discuss how prior knowledge can adversely affect recall of information. Provide specific situations in which this might occur.

Question 52

Describe the factors that contribute to the comprehension of text.

Question 53

What is a reinstatement search? How do such searches influence text comprehension? How does Kintsch incorporate them into his model?

Question 54

Describe and discuss Kintsch's model of comprehension. What support is there for the model?

Question 55

A mental model is a person's mental representation of a situation.

Question 56

If you had read this chapter's title, "Comprehension and Memory for Text," first, instead of simply "Chapter 11," how would that have influenced your comprehension of the information? Why? Use what you know about text comprehension in your answer.

Question 57

Prior knowledge plays a minimal role in text comprehension.

Question 58

How can what you have learned about text comprehension influence your own writing (creation of text)?

Question 59

Making inferences while reading a text facilitates speed of comprehension.