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The influence of narrative text characteristics on thematic inference during reading
Author(s) -
Zhang Hao,
Hoosain Rumjahn
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
journal of research in reading
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.077
H-Index - 51
eISSN - 1467-9817
pISSN - 0141-0423
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9817.00140
Subject(s) - reading comprehension , inference , narrative , theme (computing) , reading (process) , comprehension , psychology , coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) , outcome (game theory) , thematic map , linguistics , thematic structure , text processing , cognitive psychology , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , computer science , statistics , mathematics , philosophy , mathematical economics , cartography , geography , operating system
Past studies of narrative text characteristics mainly focused on comprehension and memory of the contents stated explicitly, but not thematic inference. Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of the characteristics of narrative text on generation of thematic inference. In Experiment 1, a self‐paced reading method demonstrated that an appropriate title facilitated comprehension of the theme of a text. In Experiment 2, the same titles for the texts were used, together with variation in the goal of the protagonist and outcome of the story. Results indicated that generation of thematic inference depended on the interaction between the goal of the protagonist and the final outcome of a text. These findings are consistent with the global coherence assumption of contemporary text‐processing models in which the overarching theme is constructed during reading by integrating the title, the statements about the goal of the protagonist and the final outcome of a text.