Effects of Coherence Marking on the Comprehension and Appraisal of Discourse

Effects of Coherence Marking on the Comprehension and Appraisal of Discourse Judith Kamalski (Judith.Kamalski@let.uu.nl) Utrecht Institute of Linguistics, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands Leo Lentz (Leo.Lentz@let.uu.nl) Utrecht Institute of Linguistics, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands Ted Sanders (Ted.Sanders@let.uu.nl) Utrecht Institute of Linguistics, Trans 10, 3512 JK Utrecht, The Netherlands coherence have in genres other than the informative. The third aspect of our approach concerns prior knowledge. Recent insights in text processing (for instance McNamara and Kintsch, 1996) have shown that reader characteristics such as prior knowledge have to be taken into account. The text-reader interaction is crucial to develop the knowledge we may have on the basis of earlier research on marking of coherence. Abstract In the research on the role of coherence marking in discourse, several factors have been ignored so far. In this paper, we will adopt a new approach, where we will not only investigate effects on comprehension, but also on appraisal and feeling of knowing. Moreover, the current theory will be extended by testing whether we can generalize results over different groups of subjects (with and without prior knowledge) and over genres (informative and persuasive). The results from two experiments show that it is indeed possible to generalize over genres and over subjects. Coherence markers have a positive influence on both comprehension and on appraisal. Off-line effects of Coherence Marking Keywords: coherence marking, text comprehension, discourse In general, research into the role of coherence marking on the mental representation after reading a text does not provide clear-cut answers. In some cases, linguistic marking leads to a better structure in a free reproduction task (Meyer, Brandt, & Bluth, 1980), to a faster and better answer on text comprehension questions immediately after having read the text (Millis & Just, 1994) and to a faster answer on a verification task (Sanders & Noordman, 2000). Still, markers of coherence do not seem to influence the quantity of remembered information (Britton et al., 1982; Sanders & Noordman, 2000), except for signals of importance (Lorch & Lorch, 1986), such as the situation can be summarized as follows. On the one hand, there is research that shows that markers of coherence cause better answers on text comprehension questions (Degand, Lefevre, & Bestgen, 1999; Degand & Sanders, 2002). On the other, some researchers do not find any effect of coherence marking on text comprehension questions (Spyridakis & Standal, 1987). Not all of these studies are equally reliable (see Degand & Sanders, 2002). The studies vary among other things in quality of the manipulations, naturalness and length of the experimental texts and, last but not least, the characteristics of the reader are mostly not included in the research. Introduction It has regularly been shown that marking of relational coherence influences the mental representation that a reader constructs from a text. In general, readers benefit from the presence of connectives (because, therefore) and lexical cues (the consequence is) that explicitly mark the coherence in a text. The markers make relations explicit that would otherwise have to be inferred by the reader himself. There is empirical evidence for the facilitation that markers of coherence cause during the reading-process (Gaddy, van den Broek, & Sung, 2001). They shorten the processing time of following segments (Britton, Glynn, Meyer, & Penland, 1982; Sanders & Noordman, 2000). In this paper, a new approach to the effect of coherence markers will be presented. The first new aspect of our approach concerns different types of effects. Although empirical research on coherence marking has provided us with ample knowledge on the effects on text comprehension, other effects have received less attention. In this paper, we will not only discuss the comprehension effects that coherence markers can have, but also the effects on appraisal (what is the reader’s opinion on text quality? ). A second new aspect of our approach is that we use different text types or genres. Most of the previous research on coherence marking is based on informative texts. In this paper, we will also investigate effects of coherence markers in persuasive texts, since very little is known about the effect that markers of Prior knowledge The influence of prior knowledge about the text topic on text comprehension has often been described. In their research on ‘learning from text’, McNamara and Kintsch (1996) find an interaction between prior knowledge and marking of coherence: readers with prior knowledge benefit optimally from a non-marked text, readers who lack this knowledge perform better on text comprehension questions after a