TY - JOUR
T1 - Instantiation of general terms
AU - Anderson, Richard C.
AU - Pichert, James W.
AU - Goetz, Ernest T.
AU - Schallert, Diane L.
AU - Stevens, Kathleen V.
AU - Trollip, Stanley R.
N1 - Funding Information:
The idea we wish to propose is that a word does not have a meaning, but has, rather, a family of potential meanings. When comprehended in context, the meanings of the words in an utterance are further articulated in a process of inferential interpolation based on “schemata” which embody one’s knowledge of the language and world (Anderson, 1976). The effect with respect to nouns is usually to limit the scope of reference to a subseto f the cases which would otherwise be denoted. If the context is rich and if the messagei s processed deeply, a noun may be identified with a single real or imagined thing. This pro-cessw ill be called instantiation. Theories of semanticsa nd semantic memory are in accord with common senseo n one fundamental point: Words have fixed, abstract meanings. That this must be so is taken to be necessary to explain the fact that people are facile at using and understanding a given word in an unbounded range of sentencesa nd contexts. However, a close analysis will show The research described herein was supported by the National Institute of Education under Grant No. HEW NIE-G-74-0007. Reprint requests should be addressed to Richard C. Anderson, University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading and Cognition, 1005 W. Nevada, Urbana, Illinois 61801.
PY - 1976/12
Y1 - 1976/12
N2 - Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that, when interpreted in context, general terms are typically encoded on the basis of an instantiation. The results indicated that a particular term naming the expected instantiation of a general term was a better cue for the recall of a sentence than the general term itself, even though the general term had appeared in the sentence and the particular term had not. This could not have happened if people encode and store the core meanings of general terms. It was theorized that people instantiate in order to select, from among the indefinitely many meanings a term can have, a sense which permits a coherent overall interpretation of the message.
AB - Three experiments investigated the hypothesis that, when interpreted in context, general terms are typically encoded on the basis of an instantiation. The results indicated that a particular term naming the expected instantiation of a general term was a better cue for the recall of a sentence than the general term itself, even though the general term had appeared in the sentence and the particular term had not. This could not have happened if people encode and store the core meanings of general terms. It was theorized that people instantiate in order to select, from among the indefinitely many meanings a term can have, a sense which permits a coherent overall interpretation of the message.
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U2 - 10.1016/0022-5371(76)90059-1
DO - 10.1016/0022-5371(76)90059-1
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:0000495949
SN - 0022-5371
VL - 15
SP - 667
EP - 679
JO - Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior
JF - Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior
IS - 6
ER -