Reviews prior research to stress the functionality of fluidity in making ready information to support comprehension. Explores the fading of ready information, demonstrating how quickly the accessibility of information mutually known to two reunited characters fades when the text engages other topics. Describes a series of phenomena that cohere…

Tests and confirms two hypotheses about the representation of knowledge in memory: that a person's mental representation of a newly learned body of knowledge has two parts (the information presented, and a product of the person's thinking about it); and that a body of knowledge learned from experience is organized into distinct…

Suggests that two components of natural discourse (pragmatic information and knowledge about discourse style) play a role in memory for the surface form of sentences in discourse. Shows that recognition memory increased as a function of information about the speaker's positive and negative attitudes and that substantial verbatim memory was…

Examines the phenomena of isolation and adaptation in the context of two recognition experiments investigating retroactive interference. Results suggest a framework for predicting errors and accuracies in passage memory based on integrative processing. (DF)

Suggests that a factor underlying the complex analysis of prose is amount of elaboration. Reports findings of two experiments supporting this idea. (FL)

Suggests that even the youngest children use systematic strategies in ordering the elements of a story based on causal and temporal relationships. (FL)

Indicates that subjects spent more time reading important information than unimportant information and that, when processing time was limited, extra cognitive effort was allocated to accomplish the same result. Finds that important information was also recalled better, confirming the "levels effect." Reports three experiments supporting…

Investigates the effects of breakdowns in referential and factual coherence on text comprehension and reveals that the processing of factually inconsistent information hindered other information in passages. (FL)

Concludes that the general theory of text processing proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk is able to account for the memory of radio news bulletins in a number of respects. (FL)

Provides evidence for the utility of schema-based frameworks which assume that schemas and scripts organize information, aid in comprehension, and guide information retrieval. (FL)

Examines (in two experiments) the effects of schematic and proposition-specific processing on long term story memory. Determines that recall of idea units was an additive function of the idea's importance. Finds that both proposition-specific and schema-related processing are important for long-term retention of narrative prose. (SKC)

Explores quantitative and qualitative differences in text processing, reading time, and study time and in learning from text, at immediate and delayed recall. (DF)