TY - JOUR
T1 - Adapting production to comprehension
T2 - The explicit mention of instruments
AU - Brown, Paula M.
AU - Dell, Gary S.
N1 - Funding Information:
This paper is based on the first author’s doctoral dissertation submitted to the University of Rochester. The research was supported in part by the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology in the course of an agreement with the United States Department of Education and by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8406886. The authors thank Laurie Brewer, Susan Garnsey, Lucia French, and Michael Tanenhaus for their helpful comments; Arnaldo Roldan-Suarez for writing the computer program for the reading comprehension tasks; Wendy Low and Joan Scott for being the confederate listeners; Ken Merchant for drawing the picture stimuli; James Connell and Thomas Knapp for statistical advice; and Ed Lichtenstein for helping with the computer analysis of the data. Requests for reprints should be sent to Paula M. Brown, National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester Institute of Technology, One Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester. NY 14623.
PY - 1987/10
Y1 - 1987/10
N2 - This study investigated whether production is adapted to comprehension. Experiment 1 examined whether or not instruments are explicitly mentioned in accordance with their likelihood of being inferred. Subjects read and retold 20 short stories. An analysis of the transcribed stories revealed that atypical instruments (e.g., an ice pick in a stabbing) were specified significantly more often than typical instruments (e.g., a knife in a stabbing), and instruments that were important in the story were specified slightly more often than unimportant instruments. Experiment 2 examined the mechanism accounting for this phenomenon and revealed that the speaker's beliefs about the listener's knowledge of the instrument had little impact on whether and how the instrument was mentioned. A quantitative model for mentioning instruments was proposed. Instrument concepts can be selected at three points in the production process: (1) during creation of a macroproposition encoding the main idea of a discourse episode, (2) during the elaboration of the macroproposition, and (3) during the monitoring and repair process.
AB - This study investigated whether production is adapted to comprehension. Experiment 1 examined whether or not instruments are explicitly mentioned in accordance with their likelihood of being inferred. Subjects read and retold 20 short stories. An analysis of the transcribed stories revealed that atypical instruments (e.g., an ice pick in a stabbing) were specified significantly more often than typical instruments (e.g., a knife in a stabbing), and instruments that were important in the story were specified slightly more often than unimportant instruments. Experiment 2 examined the mechanism accounting for this phenomenon and revealed that the speaker's beliefs about the listener's knowledge of the instrument had little impact on whether and how the instrument was mentioned. A quantitative model for mentioning instruments was proposed. Instrument concepts can be selected at three points in the production process: (1) during creation of a macroproposition encoding the main idea of a discourse episode, (2) during the elaboration of the macroproposition, and (3) during the monitoring and repair process.
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U2 - 10.1016/0010-0285(87)90015-6
DO - 10.1016/0010-0285(87)90015-6
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0000370993
SN - 0010-0285
VL - 19
SP - 441
EP - 472
JO - Cognitive Psychology
JF - Cognitive Psychology
IS - 4
ER -