In terms of language, there is a big difference between, let's say, object identification , recollection , and comprehension . Early on in the study of understanding scientists believed that the brain simply copied or recreated the environment within the mind prior to processing. Textbase or language comprehension involves the parallel processing of linguistic information on the phonological, semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic levels. Another important aspect of comprehension is forming hypotheses , which is a conceptually driven process in which one attempts to predict what a speaker or writer will be saying based on our expectations, prior knowledge, and contextual clues. Theme , the overall point, is perhaps one of the most critical conceptually driven elements in comprehension.
Expectations play an important role in comprehension.
Schema theory is one of the most important conceptual frameworks for understanding comprehension, in particular, and understanding cognition, in general. Some have argued that concepts only have meaning insofar as they could relate to knowledge the individual already possessed. Schema theory may be defined informally as a structure of knowledge about some topic or, more formally, as a data structure for representing generic concepts in memory. A script is a schema about certain activities or processes. Scripts have all the properties of schemata already presented, but are specifically concerned with actions.