Structure, process, and individual differences in the comprehension and recall of prose

The issue of how individuals understand and remember information from prose passages has been a topic of interest in psychology since Bartlett's pioneering work. Remembering, was published in 1932. The concept of remembering as an active, constructive process that is guided by abstract, organizational frameworks or "schemata" has become familiar now, and many psychologists are interested in investigating the nature of these schemata and in specifying how they are implemented during retrieval. Handler and Johnson (1977, 79) have proposed that retrieval schemata for prose are based on subjects' shared knowledge about the well-formedness of stories, and on ideal, rule-governed relations existing between individual story propositions. They propose that these syntactic schemata are major determinants of a subject's recall output. They report that subjects make predictable omissions and errors in recall when the actual text does not conform to the specifications of the ideal story grammar. The present study was designed to test this model further and to explore the effect of two processing variables, the mode of presentation of the story material (ORAL and WRITTEN) and subjects' reading ability level, on memory for prose passages. Two types of stories, a simple, relatively well-formed work and a longer, ambiguous passage were used as stimulus materials. An analysis of the recall protocols was was made with respect to the frequency of errors and omissions made by subjects in recalling both story types. The results were considered in the light of Handler and Johnson's pre dictions about recall. An expanded and more rigorous recall scoring system than that utilized by Handler and Johnson (1977) was developed for this purpose. This system allows for scoring categories that include attempts by the recaller to increase the coherence and meaningfulness of the story during recall as well as scoring for categories of omissions and errors. Data on inter and intra-rater reliability using this system are also reported. The results of the present study did not support the predictions made by Handler and Johnson (1977, 79) concerning subjects' recall performance. Recall performance was affected by the mode in which the prose materials were presented and by individual competencies in processing information in a given mode. These results are not wel1-accounted for by syntactic structural models such as the one proposed by Handler and Johnson (1977, 79), and other models that do consider task demands, processing capacity, and individual abilities to organize information were found to be better predictors of recall performance. The present system of scoring recall protocols was also used to explore the nature of the processing differences across modes of presentation and within groups who differ in their ability to comprehend material in the written mode. A model of the way in which readers and listeners attempt to meet processing demands was proposed based on the characteristic omissions and errors made by each group during recall. The differences noted between readers of varying skill levels was explored in a similar way. These differences seemed to involve the ability of better readers to hierarchically organize the story propositions and to construct coherent macrostructures even in the absence of coherence in the text base. Poor readers were less skilled at using information in the text to "fill in the gaps" in text structure and did not appear to be able to organize important elements of the text to facilitate recall. Educational procedures to enhance these skills in poor readers were suggested. The usefulness of employing the present scoring system to discriminate cognitive processing differences in clinical subject populations was also considered.