| Budget Amount *help |
¥2,100,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,100,000)
Fiscal Year 1998: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1997: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
Fiscal Year 1996: ¥900,000 (Direct Cost: ¥900,000)
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| Research Abstract |
To examine the construction and revision of knowledge through discourse comprehension, we run three series of experiments.
First, reading comprehension of a detective story was examined by four experiments. College students read a story, and at four points of the reading they were asked about their interpretations of the murderer, his/her motive, etc. The results were as follows : (1) The readers reached or approached to the correct conclusion as they read on the text. And when the readers read partly different texts, they made different interpretations. (2) The knowledge about the typical plot of the detective stories and conventional tricks sometimes helped readers generate the correct inferences, but other times misled them. (3) Once they constructed their own interpretation, they did not want to change it. (4) The readers were affected by their attempt to generate a joint interpretation : They might adopt their partner's interpretation or create a new interpretation.
Second, we examined comprehension processes of short oral discourse that involved a lexically ambiguous kanji word. The representation of the whole texts was revised by the latest information, but changing the interpretation of the ambiguous words was difficult, and the readers tried to solve the inconsistencies by making additional inferences.
Finally, we examined strategies coping with the lexical ambiguities in spoken Japanese. Japanese college students could readily recognize lexical ambiguity in speech and use effective strategies to reduce it.
In sum, readers construct knowledge using information in and out of the discourse.
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