The major objective of the proposed work is to extend our knowledge about memory and learning, specifically with respect to meaningful text materials. I am interested in the organization of memory and the retrieval of knowledge, and how a person adds to his store of knowledge through learning from natural language texts. Usually, the acquisition of knowledge in our experiments involves reading. The research proposed here is based upon a theory for the representation of meaning, which is used as a guideline for experimental work. The experiments concern memory for brief paragraphs as well as for much longer stories. Of special interest are the processes involved in comprehending and summarizing long stories. A theory of the macrostructure of stories proposed here permits us to investigate both reproductive and reconstructive memory for texts. Furthermore, the interaction of various levels of memory in reading and recall will be investigated (memory for meaning versus memory for such surface features as the exact wording of a text). Finally, the problem of lexical decomposition is explored: under what conditions are complex semantic concepts decomposed into their constituents, and when are these treated as unitary chunks? The ultimate goal of the proposed experiments is to provide an empirical foundation for a truly data-based theory of comprehension and memory for textual materials.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter