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The Effects of Social-Cognitive Processing Demands and Structural Importance on Narrative Recall: Differences between Children, Adolescents, and Adults
Abstract
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163853X.2016.1171070
This study examined the contributions of developmental changes in social-cognitive ability throughout adolescence to the development of narrative comprehension. We measured the effects of sensitivity to the causal structure of narratives and of sensitivity to differences in social-cognitive processing demands on narrative recall by children (8–10-years old), adolescents (13–15-years old), and adults (19–21-years old). Generalized mixed-effects models for dichotomous variables revealed that social-cognitive processing demands of story elements predicted differences in narrative recall between the age groups, over and above the causal importance of story elements. Children's and adolescents' recall of the narrative differed from that of adults, and these differences were most apparent for social-cognitive aspects of the narrative. These findings suggest that immature social-cognitive abilities limit narrative comprehension in childhood and adolescence and, in doing so, contribute to our understanding of the interaction between reader characteristics and text characteristics in the development of narrative comprehension.
... It requires the establishment of causal connections among statements, and among statements and the prior knowledge of the comprehender (Beker, Jolles, & van den Broek, 2017;Lee, 2023;Mason et al., 2023;Smith, Snow, Serry, & Hammond, 2021;Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). Statements that have a high number of these connections have been proposed to represent the main ideas of the material (Pavias, van den Broek, Hickendorff, Beker, & van Leijenhorst, 2016;Pispira, Cevasco, & Silva, 2022). The establishment of causal connections between events and the psychological reaction that they are expected to trigger promotes the generation of emotion inferences (Bohn-Gettler & Kaakinen, 2022;Gernsbacher, 1995;Gillioz & Gygax, 2017;Mouw, Van Leijenhorst, Saab, Danel, & van den Broek, 2019;Stein & Trabasso, 1992). ...
... The establishment of causal connections has been examined by the Causal Network Model (Pavias et al., 2016;Trabasso & Sperry, 1985;Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985). This Model proposes that a causal connection exists between two statements, when it can be proposed that the one that is considered cause is temporarily prior (that is, it occurs before its consequence), operative (it is active when the consequence occurs) and necessary in the described circumstances for the consequence to occur. ...
... Prior studies suggest that statements with many causal connections are recalled more often than events with few connections (Espin, Cevasco, van den Broek, Baker, & Gersten, 2007;Fichman, Armon-Lotem, Walters, & Altman, 2021;Goldman & Varnhagen, 1986;Pavias et al., 2016;Radvansky, Tamplin, Armendarez, & Thompson, 2014;Trabasso & van den Broek, 1985), rated as more important (Trabasso & Sperry, 1985), more often included in summarization protocols (van den Broek & Trabasso, 1986), and retrieved more quickly (O'Brien & Myers, 1987) than those with a low number of them in text comprehension. These studies have tended to focus on the comprehension of written discourse, which has tended to be created by the experimenters (Cossavella & Cevasco, 2021;Ferreira & Anes, 1994;Fraundorf & Watson, 2011;Pispira et al., 2022). ...
... Understanding narratives involves constructing a coherent representation of the discourse in memory (Carlson et al., 2022;Cevasco & van den Broek, 2017;Karlsson et al., 2018;Kraal et al., 2017;Tibken et al., 2022). Previous studies suggest that the construction of this representation involves establishing causal connections among the described events (Fichman et al., 2021;Pavias et al., 2016;van den Broek, 2010). These connections are considered necessary for comprehension (Bruïne et al., 2021;van Moort et al., 2021;Wei et al., 2021). ...
... Narrative comprehension has also been conceptualized as the construction of a causal network (Pavias et al., 2016;Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). The causal network model provides explicit criteria to establish the existence of a causal connection between two statements: it proposes that the cause must be prior to the consequence (temporal priority), it must be operative when the consequence occurs (e.g., a goal when the protagonist tries to obtain it), and it must be necessary for the consequence to occur (it must be possible for it to be proposed that, if the event that is considered a cause had not occurred, then the one considered a consequence would not have occurred either). ...
... Trabasso and Sperry (1985) examined this issue and observed that college students assigned higher importance scores to events that had a high number of causal connections. Similar results were found by Trabasso and van den Broek (1985) and Pavias et al. (2016). ...
The establishing of causal connections is key to the construction of discourse coherence. The aim of this narrative review is to present research that has examined the establishment of these connections in the construction of narrative discourse coherence, in order to highlight gaps in current research and suggest future directions. Among these gaps, we will highlight that prior research has not tended to examine the role of the modality of presentation of the materials, or to present spontaneous discourse, or materials about current social problems. In order to review these topics, we introduce the causal chain model, causal network model, causal inference maker model, landscape model, and contributions from constructionist theory and the event-indexing model. We also present studies that support their claims. Finally, we present conclusions and discuss future directions. The presentation of these studies will allow us to underscore the crucial need for research to examine the comprehension of discourse that students process in academic settings, everyday interactions, and that focuses on relevant current social issues.
... Understanding narratives involves constructing a coherent representation of the discourse in memory (Carlson et al., 2022;Cevasco & van den Broek, 2017;Karlsson et al., 2018;Kraal et al., 2017;Tibken et al., 2022). Previous studies suggest that the construction of this representation involves establishing causal connections among the described events (Fichman et al., 2021;Pavias et al., 2016;van den Broek, 2010). These connections are considered necessary for comprehension (Bruïne et al., 2021;van Moort et al., 2021;Wei et al., 2021). ...
... Narrative comprehension has also been conceptualized as the construction of a causal network (Pavias et al., 2016;Trabasso & Sperry, 1985). The causal network model provides explicit criteria to establish the existence of a causal connection between two statements: it proposes that the cause must be prior to the consequence (temporal priority), it must be operative when the consequence occurs (e.g., a goal when the protagonist tries to obtain it), and it must be necessary for the consequence to occur (it must be possible for it to be proposed that, if the event that is considered a cause had not occurred, then the one considered a consequence would not have occurred either). ...
... Trabasso and Sperry (1985) examined this issue and observed that college students assigned higher importance scores to events that had a high number of causal connections. Similar results were found by Trabasso and van den Broek (1985) and Pavias et al. (2016). ...
The establishing of causal connections is key to the construction of discourse coherence. The aim of this narrative
review is to present research that has examined the establishment of these connections in the construction of
narrative discourse coherence, in order to highlight gaps in current research and suggest future directions. Among
these gaps, we will highlight that prior research has not tended to examine the role of the modality of presentation
of the materials, or to present spontaneous discourse, or materials about current social problems. In order to review
these topics, we introduce the causal chain model, causal network model, causal inference maker model, landscape
model, and contributions from constructionist theory and the event-indexing model. We also present studies that
support their claims. Finally, we present conclusions and discuss future directions. The presentation of these studies will allow us to underscore the crucial need for research to examine the comprehension of discourse that students process in academic settings, everyday interactions, and that focuses on relevant current social issues.
... As was suggested, story grammar theory highlights that the establishment of causal connections plays a key role in the construction of narrative coherence (Fichman et al., 2021;Stein & Glenn, 1979). The Causal Network Model (Pavias et al., 2016;Trabasso & Sperry, 1985) has examined the establishment of these connections. According to this theory, a causal connection exists between two statements when it can be proposed that the one that is the cause is temporarily prior (i.e., it occurs before its consequence), operative (i.e., it is active prior to or when the consequence occurs) and necessary in the described circumstances for the consequence to occur. ...
... Considering the theoretical frameworks and studies that were reviewed, we can highlight the crucial role that causal connections play in narrative discourse and cognition in general (Pavias et al., 2016;Trabasso & Sperry, 1985) and the key role of narratives as tools for reasoning under radical uncertainty (Johnson et al., 2022;Tuckett & Nikolic, 2017). It is, thus, no wonder that causality has received attention in cognitive science (Danks, 2009), artificial cognition (Lake et al., 2017), and even statistical learning (Gelman, 2011). ...
Psychonarratology is a discipline that combines classic frameworks in narratology and psycholinguistics. The goal of this review article is to highlight the contributions that recent evidence from causality processing studies, conceptual metaphor theory and embodied cognition can make to Psychonarratology, in order to promote a more comprehensive study of narrative. We argue that, in order to increase its descriptive and explanatory power, Psychonarratology would benefit from a more strongly interdisciplinary approach. This approach would integrate grounded theoretical cognition and recent methods from different disciplines. With this aim, we review study evidence that highlights the fundamental link between cognition and causal connections in narratives, as well as proposals from conceptualization theories. These approaches indicate that metaphorical mappings and discourse connections play a crucial role in the establishment of narrative sequences. Moreover, we elaborate on the contributions that recent advances in research on embodied cognition, causality processing and Conceptual Metaphor Theory can make to the theoretical and methodological framework of Psychonarratology, such as promoting the design of more ecologically valid tasks, and the study of narrative production and comprehension by non-neurotypical participants.
... This is because highly connected idea units are central to the structure of a text and therefore more important than other idea units (van den Broek et al., 1996). In addition, as comprehension improves through age and experience, readers become more likely to recall highly connected idea units compared to other idea units (Pavias et al., 2016;van den Broek et al., 2009;Yeari & Lev, 2021). This is because readers develop sensitivity to structural centrality and are more aware of what ideas are key to comprehending a text . ...
The purpose of this study was to validate a novel reading comprehension assessment for college students named MOCCA-College. A random sample of college students (N = 63, average age of 22.5) were recruited from various education programs (e.g., first-year courses, TRIO, SONA) and completed MOCCA-College Online and were later recruited to complete face-to-face think-aloud and recall tasks, as well as standardized assessments such as the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (NDRT) and the Test of Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE-2). Based on the think-aloud findings, correct answers on MOCCA-College were associated with meaningful connections to background knowledge. Incorrect answers were associated with irrelevant connections to background knowledge that are not helpful for comprehension. Moreover, efficiency on MOCCA-College (seconds per correct answer) demonstrated criterion validity based on the NDRT and TOWRE-2. Future research and analyses may examine assessment development, particularly for identifying nuanced individual differences in college readers’ comprehension.
... Stories contain implicit and explicit information about character's mental states, feelings, thoughts, and intentions (Dyer et al., 2000). For this reason, several authors have suggested that narrative comprehension may require character's perspectivetaking to infer goal-directed or goal-oriented actions (e.g., Pavias et al., 2016;Singer et al., 1994;Trabasso, 2005). Therefore, readers must use their social cognition abilities, including empathy and ToM, in order to make sense of narratives. ...
Several studies showed a positive effect of stories on Theory of Mind (ToM) performance. The aim of the present exploratory study was to investigate whether and how a specific aspect of narrative, i.e., character perspective, modulates the brain activation in response to a ToM task and improve the accuracy. Fifty participants were divided in three groups based on the text assigned: first-person perspective group (1 G; n = 16), third-person perspective group (3 G; n = 18) and a scientific essay group (EG; n = 16). The electroencephalographic and behavioral responses to eyes expressions, taken from the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test, were recorded pre-(T0) and post-(T1) reading task. The main results showed a greater N100 on left fronto-central electrodes and a greater P220–400 on right temporo-parietal electrodes in response to eye expressions at T1 compared to T0 in 3 G. A lower N220–400 was found on right fronto-central in response to eye expressions at T1 compared to T0 in 1 G and 3 G. The results suggest that, although reading first- and third-person stories modulates self-processes in a similar way, third-person stories involve an early stage of processing and a more extended neural network including anterior-posterior brain sites.
... Notably, these studies revealed diverging factor structures. The significant differences in physical, social, and mental constructs between adults and adolescents [39] necessitate age-specific validation to ensure the measure's reliability and validity in younger age groups. Sources of pressure may vary across different stages of adolescence. ...
Background
Negative body image and disordered eating are common among adolescents and young adults. The Sociocultural Attitudes Towards Appearance Questionnaire-4-Revised (SATAQ-4R) captures the internalization of societal appearance ideals and perceived pressures from others but has not been validated in a Norwegian adolescent population.
Methods
The current study explored the factor structure of SATAQ-4R in a sample of adolescent Norwegian males and females (n = 1558, mean age 17.04 ± 0.95) using confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) for a 6- and 7-factor structure in females, and a 7-factor structure in males. Correlations between subscales, internal consistency and reliability, and comparisons with convergent measures (disordered eating, body mass index, negative influence of social media) were explored.
Results
The CFA supported a 7-factor structure of the SATAQ-4R for both males and females. Internal consistency and reliability were acceptable. SATAQ-4R subscales largely correlated with disordered eating and additional convergent measures.
Conclusions
Results confirm the structure and reliability of the SATAQ-4R in a Norwegian adolescent population. The subscales showed good convergent validity, and high scores on internalization and societal pressures were related to higher levels of disordered eating and negative social media influence. The Norwegian version of the SATAQ-4R thus demonstrates good psychometric properties in adolescent males and females, and is well suited to capture internalization and sociocultural pressures that particularly affect adolescents. Results highlight the need to continue working towards reducing adverse internalization and improving body image among adolescents.
... To explain variance on the level of persons and/or items, predictor variables can be added to the regression, which has been called explanatory IRT modeling (De Boeck & Wilson, 2004). Such an approach has been used before in other studies addressing the effects of task/problem features in the domain of mathematics (Fagginger Auer et al., 2016, 2018Hickendorff, 2020), reading (Pavias et al., 2016), and analogical reasoning (Stevenson et al., 2013). ...
Two studies examined inferences drawn about the protagonist’s emotional state in movies (Study 1)
or audiobooks (Study 2). Children aged 5, 8, and 10 years old and adults took part. Participants saw
or heard 20 movie scenes or sections of audiobooks taken or adapted from the TV show Lassie. An
online measure of emotional inference was designed that assessed the ability of the participants to
understand the main protagonist’s emotional state. The participants’ emotional knowledge and media
literacy were assessed as further variables. The results of the studies provide evidence that children
from the age of 5 build emotional inferences when both watching movies and listening to audiobooks.
A developmental trend exists with regard to the precision of the emotional inferences. Media
literacy and emotional knowledge differed in terms of their influence on the ability to generate
inferences, which was dependent on the age of the participant and the presentation mode.
The Common Core set a standard for all children to read increasingly complex texts throughout schooling. The purpose of the present study was to explore text characteristics specifically in relation to early-grades text complexity. Three hundred fifty primary-grades texts were selected and digitized. Twenty-two text characteristics were identified at 4 linguistic levels, and multiple computerized operationalizations were created for each of the 22 text characteristics. A researcher-devised text-complexity outcome measure was based on teacher judgment of text complexity in the 350 texts as well as on student judgment of text complexity as gauged by their responses in a maze task for a subset of the 350 texts. Analyses were conducted using a logical analytical progression typically used in machine-learning research. Random forest regression was the primary statistical modeling technique. Nine text characteristics were most important for early-grades text complexity including word structure (decoding demand and number of syllables in words), word meaning (age of acquisition, abstractness, and word rareness), and sentence and discourse-level characteristics (intersentential complexity, phrase diversity, text density/information load, and noncompressibility). Notably, interplay among text characteristics was important to explanation of text complexity, particularly for subsets of texts.
Using data from children in South Korea (N = 145, Mage = 6.08), it was determined how low-level language and cognitive skills (vocabulary, syntactic knowledge, and working memory) and high-level cognitive skills (comprehension monitoring and theory of mind [ToM]) are related to listening comprehension and whether listening comprehension and word reading mediate the relations of language and cognitive skills to reading comprehension. Low-level skills predicted comprehension monitoring and ToM, which in turn predicted listening comprehension. Vocabulary and syntactic knowledge were also directly related to listening comprehension, whereas working memory was indirectly related via comprehension monitoring and ToM. Listening comprehension and word reading completely mediated the relations of language and cognitive skills to reading comprehension.
This study investigated the generation of emotional inferences during the reading and recall of narrative texts. Experiment 1 compared the fit of two simulations of text comprehension to the recall data. One simulation examined causal and referential inferences, while the other examined causal, referential and emotional inferences. We found that the simulation that involved emotional inferences provided a better fit to the human data than the other simulation. Experiment 2 tested whether emotional inferences are generated online by recording lexical decision times at pre-inference and inference locations. Lexical decision times were faster at the inference than the pre-inference locations. These findings suggest that emotional inferences play a role in the understanding of natural texts, and that they require the reader to establish connections between text segments.
This paper identifies several serious problems with the widespread use of ANOVAs for the analysis of categorical outcome variables such as forced-choice variables, question-answer accuracy, choice in production (e.g. in syntactic priming research), et cetera. I show that even after applying the arcsine-square-root transformation to proportional data, ANOVA can yield spurious results. I discuss conceptual issues underlying these problems and alternatives provided by modern statistics. Specifically, I introduce ordinary logit models (i.e. logistic regression), which are well-suited to analyze categorical data and offer many advantages over ANOVA. Unfortunately, ordinary logit models do not include random effect modeling. To address this issue, I describe mixed logit models (Generalized Linear Mixed Models for binomially distributed outcomes, Breslow & Clayton, 1993), which combine the advantages of ordinary logit models with the ability to account for random subject and item effects in one step of analysis. Throughout the paper, I use a psycholinguistic data set to compare the different statistical methods.
Understanding others’ mental states is a crucial skill that enables the complex social relationships that characterize human
societies. Yet little research has investigated what fosters this skill, which is known as Theory of Mind (ToM), in adults.
We present five experiments showing that reading literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective ToM (experiments
1 to 5) and cognitive ToM (experiments 4 and 5) compared with reading nonfiction (experiments 1), popular fiction (experiments
2 to 5), or nothing at all (experiments 2 and 5). Specifically, these results show that reading literary fiction temporarily
enhances ToM. More broadly, they suggest that ToM may be influenced by engagement with works of art.
To facilitate a multidimensional approach to empathy the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) includes 4 subscales: Perspective-Taking (PT) Fantasy (FS) Empathic Concern (EC) and Personal Distress (PD). The aim of the present study was to establish the convergent and discriminant validity of these 4 subscales. Hypothesized relationships among the IRI subscales between the subscales and measures of other psychological constructs (social functioning self-esteem emotionality and sensitivity to others) and between the subscales and extant empathy measures were examined. Study subjects included 677 male and 667 female students enrolled in undergraduate psychology classes at the University of Texas. The IRI scales not only exhibited the predicted relationships among themselves but also were related in the expected manner to other measures. Higher PT scores were consistently associated with better social functioning and higher self-esteem; in contrast Fantasy scores were unrelated to these 2 characteristics. High EC scores were positively associated with shyness and anxiety but negatively linked to egotism. The most substantial relationships in the study involved the PD scale. PD scores were strongly linked with low self-esteem and poor interpersonal functioning as well as a constellation of vulnerability uncertainty and fearfulness. These findings support a multidimensional approach to empathy by providing evidence that the 4 qualities tapped by the IRI are indeed separate constructs each related in specific ways to other psychological measures.
I thank the editors of the present volume for the opportunity to contribute to this book. Ed O'Brien and Anne Cook provided insightful and constructive feedback that greatly improved the chapter. It is unusual when a researcher is provided the opportunity to write on any topic solely based on their perspective rather than on the objective, irrefutable facts their research has produced. So, I welcomed the invitation to write a chapter on my own neuroscientific work on inference processes during reading, and do that from a rather personal point of view. I will start out with the motivation to conduct neuroscientific studies on inference processes, briefly summarizing nonaphasic language deficits and a number of my own studies on this topic. In the second section, I will review the first neuroimaging studies on coherence building. I will then summarize the most important findings, sketch theoretical proposals, and point to further research questions. Throughout this chapter, I will focus on my own perspective. Thus, I apologize to all colleagues who work in this field for not including their work in sufficient detail. In the chapter, some basic neuroanatomical knowledge is assumed. For easier reference, the anatomical labels used throughout are shown in Figures 11.1 and 11.2. After having completed my dissertation on text comprehension in 1994, I started a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Cognitive Neuroscience in Leipzig, Germany. This was quite a move: from behavioral cognitive science to an environment in which laboratories with the latest methodological advances were being set up, combined with clinical applications as required at the associated Day Clinic for Cognitive Neurorehabilitation. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was just starting to be used with the goal of localizing subprocesses of language comprehension. Although the scanner was already available, the statistical analysis methods had yet to be developed to allow for sophisticated experimentation.
