Abstract
Subjects performed a task that involved learning a text and then indicating, for each of a series of pairs of words, whether they belonged to the same sentence of that text. When the principle of argument overlap or causal coherence was the sole integrative factor in a text, negative response times and error rates reflected distances in the network representation predicted by the principle. When the two principles predicted conflicting representations for a text, response times and error rates reflected the predictions of the principle of argument overlap. The results were interpreted as suggesting that network connections predicted by the two principles are both present in the memory representations of texts and that causal connections are recorded at a more abstract level of representation than are argument overlap connections.
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The author is grateful to Jerry Myers and Johanna Nordlie for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, and to Tom Bever, Barbara Dosher, and David Krantz for useful suggestions concerning the research that it reports.
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Dopkins, S. Text representations as reflected in patterns of cognitive distance. Memory & Cognition 25, 72–95 (1997). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197286
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197286