Deck 7: Discourse Comprehension and Memory

Question 1

The difficulty of reading passages has been found to depend on:

A) the distance of an antecedent to an anaphor
B) whether a passage has both local and global structure
C) whether the passage contains given or new information
D) whether the sentence contains anaphoric or cataphoric reference

Answer 1

the distance of an antecedent to an anaphor

Question 2

Which of the following are strategies for establishing coherence?

A) given/new, direct matching, and reinstating old information
B) substitution, ellipsis, and conjunctive
C) reiteration, synonomy, and hyponymy
D) pronominal, demonstrative, and comparative

Answer 2

given/new, direct matching, and reinstating old information

Question 3

The type of cohesion in which we use an expression to refer back to something previously mentioned in discourse is called ____ reference.

A) lexical
B) cataphoric
C) assimilative
D) anaphoric

Answer 3

anaphoric

Question 4

Memory for _______ shows the least forgetting over time.

A) surface text
B) verbatim representation
C) situations
D) propositions

Question 5

A structure in semantic memory that specifies the general or expected arrangement of a body of information is called a:

A) discourse model
B) situational model
C) parsing mechanism
D) schema

Question 6

The strategy likely to be used to comprehend the sentences Last Christmas Eugene went to a lot of parties. This Christmas he got very drunk again is:

A) anaphoric reference
B) reinstatement
C) bridging
D) none of the above

Question 7

Perrig and Kintsch (1985) found that when a text used sentences such as North of the highway just east of the river is a gas station, subjects were more likely to store the text in the form of:

A) a surface representation
B) a propositional representation
C) a situational model
D) a motion sentence

Question 8

The sentences The woman lost track of her little boy at the mall. She became very worried illustrate what type of cohesion?

A) substitution
B) lexical
C) ellipsis
D) reference

Question 9

By replacing (rather than repeating) a lexical item in a sentence, we are using the form of cohesion known as:

A) ellipsis
B) anaphor
C) lexical
D) antecedent

Question 10

Inferences that are drawn during discourse comprehension:

A) reflect the imaginative contribution of skilled readers
B) are the result of recall errors
C) are necessary for processing discourse effectively
D) are rarely drawn when reading printed material

Question 11

_______ connects individual sentences and ideas in a discourse.

A) Ellipsis
B) Reference
C) Macrostructure
D) Microstructure

Question 12

The local structure of a text refers to:

A) the inferences readers draw during discourse comprehension
B) the relationships between individual sentences in a discourse
C) the distinction between given and new information
D) the process of referring back to previous material in discourse

Question 13

The three representations of discourse are:

A) direct, demonstrative, and comparative
B) local, global, and situational
C) reference, lexical, and conjunction
D) propositional, surface, and situational

Question 14

Which of the following was NOT a focus of the Daneman and Carpenter (1980) study?

A) examining tradeoffs between storage and processing functions of working memory
B) examining individual differences in the size of working memory
C) measuring the relationship between the size of working memory and SAT scores
D) measuring speed/accuracy tradeoffs in reading complex text passages

Question 15

The level of discourse that specifies the meaning of a passage apart from the exact words used is the:

A) surface representation
B) verbatim representation
C) propositional representation
D) situational model

Question 16

McKoon and Ratliff's (1980) study of spreading activation showed that the greatest degree of priming was between propositions:

A) close in the discourse structure
B) close in the surface structure
C) similar in verbatim representation
D) concurrently represented in a situational model

Question 17

The distinction between direct matching and bridging is that in bridging:

A) the reference is to something that occurred several sentences back
B) the reference is to material that must be inferred
C) the reference is by synonym instead of by exact repetition
D) the reference has been ellipted

Question 18

Jarvella (1971) presented individuals with a long oral passage, interrupted it at irregular intervals, and had them write down as much of the preceding discourse as they could, verbatim. The results showed that the percentage of correct recall of a clause was greater if:

A) it was part of the current sentence as opposed to the preceding sentence
B) they were allowed to try to complete the sentence orally
C) it was pragmatically significant
D) it could be imagined visually

Question 19

.Kintsch and Keenan (1973) found that sentences with more propositions _____ than those with fewer propositions.

A) are harder to recall
B) are easier to recall
C) take longer to read
D) take less time to read

Question 20

Daneman and Carpenter (1980) found that students with better performance on the reading span task:

A) had more trouble comprehending anaphoric pronouns
B) had better verbal SAT scores
C) were better at a simple span task
D) were slower readers

Question 21

Studies of the processing of episodes have found that:

A) we tend to remember episodes in an all-or-none fashion
B) reading times are fastest at the beginnings and ends of episodes
C) we remember reactions and goals better than attempts and outcomes
D) readers are oblivious to the emotional responses of characters in stories

Question 22

Anomalous suspense occurs when:

A) we find a novel suspenseful even when we know how it turns out
B) we prefer unpredictable stories over more predictable ones
C) stories elicit cognitive reactions rather than emotional ones
D) the title of a story conflicts with the story content

Question 23

According to the text discussion, the best overall comprehension strategy when faced with unfamiliar material is to:

A) use schemata to guide discourse processing
B) draw as many inferences as possible
C) use shadowing as much as possible
D) pay close attention to local discourse structure

Question 24

Palincsar and Brown (1984) were able to demonstrate substantial increases in student reading comprehension when:

A) titles oriented the students to certain passages in the text
B) the students read the passage out loud
C) the students were taught to formulate questions that addressed the important points of the text
D) the students chose the material themselves

Question 25

Cross-cultural investigations of story recall have found that:

A) cultures differ significantly in what constitutes a good story
B) recall patterns are very similar across cultures
C) oral cultures tend to prefer shorter stories
D) children in all cultures recalled stories better than adults

Question 26

Reder and Anderson (1980) compared recall of standard passages with recall of passages with many details omitted. They found that retention was:

A) best with the standard passages
B) best when the details were omitted
C) equivalent in the two conditions
D) best when details were presented tersely

Question 27

According to the text discussion, students might have difficulty remembering the most important points in a lecture because:

A) the schemata of students is in conflict with the schemata of lecturers
B) students rely on written text to construct an appropriate schema
C) students lack a relevant schema for unfamiliar material
D) the creation of a schema during a lecture competes with the auditory processing of the lecture

Question 28

Studies of the role of titles in text comprehension have shown that:

A) titles are only comprehended after the passage is understood
B) titles orient readers to particular aspects of a passage
C) readers often find titles to be distracting
D) subjects ignore titles when searching for an appropriate schema