Discourse Processes 

About: Discourse Processes is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Reading (process) & Reading comprehension. It has an ISSN identifier of 0163-853X. Over the lifetime, 1239 publications have been published receiving 61356 citations. The journal is also known as: DP.

An introduction to latent semantic analysis

Abstract: Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a theory and method for extracting and representing the contextual‐usage meaning of words by statistical computations applied to a large corpus of text (Landauer & Dumais, 1997). The underlying idea is that the aggregate of all the word contexts in which a given word does and does not appear provides a set of mutual constraints that largely determines the similarity of meaning of words and sets of words to each other. The adequacy of LSA's reflection of human knowledge has been established in a variety of ways. For example, its scores overlap those of humans on standard vocabulary and subject matter tests; it mimics human word sorting and category judgments; it simulates word‐word and passage‐word lexical priming data; and, as reported in 3 following articles in this issue, it accurately estimates passage coherence, learnability of passages by individual students, and the quality and quantity of knowledge contained in an essay.

The Measurement of Textual Coherence with Latent Semantic Analysis.

Abstract: Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is used as a technique for measuring the coherence of texts. By comparing the vectors for 2 adjoining segments of text in a high‐dimensional semantic space, the method provides a characterization of the degree of semantic relatedness between the segments. We illustrate the approach for predicting coherence through reanalyzing sets of texts from 2 studies that manipulated the coherence of texts and assessed readers’ comprehension. The results indicate that the method is able to predict the effect of text coherence on comprehension and is more effective than simple term‐term overlap measures. In this manner, LSA can be applied as an automated method that produces coherence predictions similar to propositional modeling. We describe additional studies investigating the application of LSA to analyzing discourse structure and examine the potential of LSA as a psychological model of coherence effects in text comprehension.

Transportation Into Narrative Worlds: The Role of Prior Knowledge and Perceived Realism.

Abstract: "Transportation into a narrative world" (Green & Brock, 2000, 2002) has been identified as a mechanism of narrative impact. A transported individual is cognitively and emotionally involved in the story and may experience vivid mental images. In the study reported here, undergraduate participants (N = 152) read a narrative about a homosexual man attending his college fraternity reunion, rated their transportation into the story, rated the perceived realism of the story, and responded to statements describing story-relevant beliefs. Transportation was positively correlated with perceived realism. Furthermore, individuals with prior knowledge or experience relevant to the themes of the story (e.g., had homosexual friends or family members, were knowledgeable about American fraternities) showed greater transportation into the story. Highly transported readers showed more story-consistent beliefs, and the positive relationship between transportation and story-consistent beliefs held for those both with and wit...

Learning from texts: Effects of prior knowledge and text coherence

Abstract: Two experiments, theoretically motivated by the construction‐integration model of comprehension (W. Kintsch, 1988), investigated effects of prior knowledge on learning from high‐ and low‐coherence history texts. In Experiment 1, participants’ comprehension was examined through free recall, multiple‐choice questions, and a keyword sorting task. An advantage was found for the high‐coherence text on recall and multiple‐choice questions. However, high‐knowledge readers performed better on the sorting task after reading the low‐coherence text. In Experiment 2, participants’ comprehension was examined through open‐ended questions and the sorting task both immediately and after a 1‐week delay. Little effect of delay was found, and the previous sorting task results failed to replicate. As predicted, high‐knowledge readers performed better on the open‐ended questions after reading the low‐coherence text. Reading times from both experiments indicated that the low‐coherence text requires more inference processes. Th...

Gender Differences in Language Use: An Analysis of 14,000 Text Samples

Abstract: Differences in the ways that men and women use language have long been of interest in the study of discourse. Despite extensive theorizing, actual empirical investigations have yet to converge on a coherent picture of gender differences in language. A significant reason is the lack of agreement over the best way to analyze language. In this research, gender differences in language use were examined using standardized categories to analyze a database of over 14,000 text files from 70 separate studies. Women used more words related to psychological and social processes. Men referred more to object properties and impersonal topics. Although these effects were largely consistent across different contexts, the pattern of variation suggests that gender differences are larger on tasks that place fewer constraints on language use.