Narrative Comprehension Causality And Coherence

This volume provides an excellent overview of the field of discourse processes, capturing both its breadth and its depth. World-renowned researchers present the latest theoretical developments and thought-provoking empirical data. In doing so, they cover a broad range of communicative activities, including text comprehension, conversational communication, argumentation, television or media viewing, and more. A central theme across all chapters concerns the notion that coherence determines the interpretation of the communication. The various chapters illustrate the many forms that coherence can take, and explore its role in different communicative settings.

This volume's goal is to provide readers with up-to-date information on the research and theory of scientific text comprehension. It is widely acknowledged that the comprehension of science and technological artifacts is very difficult for both children and adults. The material is conceptually complex, there is very little background knowledge for most individuals, and the materials are often poorly written. Therefore, it is no surprise that students are turned off from learning science and technology. Given these challenges, it is important to design scientific text in a fashion that fits the cognitive constraints of the learner. The enterprise of textbook design needs to be effectively integrated with research in discourse processing, educational technology, and cognitive science. This book takes a major step in promoting such an integration. This volume: *provides an important integration of research and theory with theoretical, methodological, and educational applications; *includes a number of chapters that cover how science text information affects mental representations and strategies; *introduces important suggestions about how text design and new technologies can be thought of as pedagogical features; and *establishes academic text taxonomies and a consensus of the criteria to organize inferences and other mental mechanisms.

Text comprehension is a critical area of psychological and educational research, and has particular relevance to educational context. The general aim of this international volume Reading Comprehension in Educational Settings is to encourage excellence in research and to bring together teachers, students, researchers and other professionals from different disciplines (e.g. psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, education, information technology, and communication), as well as all those members of the general public who have an interest in the study of reading. The specific objectives of the different chapters in this volume are to analyze existing methods of studying the various aspects of reading comprehension, disseminate results already obtained by research groups working in the field and debate current and future trends in the study of reading.

The Psychology of Learning and Motivation series publishes empirical and theoretical contributions in cognitive and experimental psychology, ranging from classical and instrumental conditioning to complex learning and problem solving. Each chapter thoughtfully integrates the writings of leading contributors, who present and discuss significant bodies of research relevant to their discipline. Volume 51 includes chapters on such varied topics as emotion and memory interference, electrophysiology, mathematical cognition, and reader participation in narrative. * Volume 51 of the highly regarded Psychology of Learning and Motivation series * An essential reference for researchers and academics in cognitive science * Relevant to both applied concerns and basic research

Writing is one of humankind's greatest inventions, and modern societies could not function if their citizens could not read and write. How do skilled readers pick up meaning from markings on a page so quickly, and how do children learn to do so? The chapters in the Oxford Handbook of Reading synthesize research on these topics from fields ranging from vision science to cognitive psychology and education, focusing on how studies using a cognitive approach can shed light on how the reading process works. To set the stage, the opening chapters present information about writing systems and methods of studying reading, including those that examine speeded responses to individual words as well as those that use eye movement technology to determine how sentences and short passages of text are processed. The following section discusses the identification of single words by skilled readers, as well as insights from studies of adults with reading disabilities due to brain damage. Another section considers how skilled readers read a text silently, addressing such issues as the role of sound in silent reading and how readers' eyes move through texts. Detailed quantitative models of the reading process are proposed throughout. The final sections deal with how children learn to read and spell, and how they should be taught to do so. These chapters review research with learners of different languages and those who speak different dialects of a language; discuss children who develop typically as well as those who exhibit specific disabilities in reading; and address questions about how reading should be taught with populations ranging from preschoolers to adolescents, and how research findings have influenced education. The Oxford Handbook of Reading will benefit researchers and graduate students in the fields of cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, education, and related fields (e.g., speech and language pathology) who are interested in reading, reading instruction, or reading disorders.

A study of inferencing from a wide variety of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives, as well as different levels of processing.

Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Although causal reasoning is a component of most of our cognitive functions, it has been neglected in cognitive psychology for many decades. The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning offers a state-of-the-art review of the growing field, and its contribution to the world of cognitive science. The Handbook begins with an introduction of competing theories of causal learning and reasoning. In the next section, it presents research about basic cognitive functions involved in causal cognition, such as perception, categorization, argumentation, decision-making, and induction. The following section examines research on domains that embody causal relations, including intuitive physics, legal and moral reasoning, psychopathology, language, social cognition, and the roles of space and time. The final section presents research from neighboring fields that study developmental, phylogenetic, and cultural differences in causal cognition. The chapters, each written by renowned researchers in their field, fill in the gaps of many cognitive psychology textbooks, emphasizing the crucial role of causal structures in our everyday lives. This Handbook is an essential read for students and researchers of the cognitive sciences, including cognitive, developmental, social, comparative, and cross-cultural psychology; philosophy; methodology; statistics; artificial intelligence; and machine learning.

The impact of public narratives has been so broad (including effects on beliefs and behavior but extending beyond to emotion and personality), that the stakeholders in the process have been located across disciplines, institutions, governments, and, indeed, across epochs. Narrative Impact draws upon scholars in diverse branches of psychology and media research to explore the subjective experience of public narratives, the affordances of the narrative environment, and the roles played by narratives in both personal and collective spheres. The book brings together current theory and research presented primarily from an empirical psychological and communications perspective, as well as contributions from literary theory, sociology, and censorship studies. To be commensurate with the broad scope of influence of public narratives, the book includes the narrative mobilization of major social movements, the formation of self-concepts in young people, banning of texts in schools, the constraining impact of narratives on jurors in the court room, and the wide use of education entertainment to affect social changes. Taken together, the interdisciplinary nature of the book and its stellar list of contributors set it apart from many edited volumes. Narrative Impact will draw readership from various fields, including sociology, literary studies, and curriculum policy. Providing new explanatory concepts, this book: *is the first account on the psychology of narrative persuasion and brings together the relevant conceptualizations from within various sectors of psychology together with the major issues that concern cognate disciplines outside of psychology; *focuses on understanding the mechanisms that underlie the power of public narratives to achieve broad historical and social changes; *offers breakthroughs to the future: the role of "presence" in virtual reality narratives; the role of "zines" in females' fashioning of their selves; and the central role of imagery in transportation into narrative worlds; *explains varying roles of emotion in narrative immersion; and *addresses the growing blurring of fact and fiction: mechanisms and implications for beliefs and behavior.