Abstract
The present experiments aimed at separating comprehension of a sentence from its verification. Presentation of a first sentence was terminated by the subject’s keypress after his comprehension. This gave a measure of sentence comprehension. A second sentence appeared immediately for a fixed interval. Then, a picture was presented, and the subject verified the first sentence against the picture. Finally, a second picture appeared, and the subject verified the second sentence against the second picture. The purpose of presenting a second sentence was to stop the processing of the first sentence after the subject’s keypress (so that comprehension did not continue beyond what was measured) and also to insure the subject’s full comprehension (comprehending the sentence to form a unitary representation) that would resist forgetting in the face of processing a second sentence. The purpose of presenting a second picture was to insure the subject’s processing of a second sentence. Using this experimental technique, an atypical pattern of verification latencies ITA < FA < TN < FN) was obtained (Experiment 1). When a sentence could be falsified in more than one way (Experiment 2), TN was found to be about equal to FN. A theoretical model was proposed to account for the present and the previous findings.
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Paivio, A., & Begg, I.Imagery and comprehension latencies as a function of sentence concreteness and structure (Research Bulletin 154). London, Ontario: University of Western Ontario, Department of Psychology, 1970.
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This study was supported by National Science Council Grant 68H-03-02(02), Republic of China.
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Liu, IM. Separating comprehension from the verification process. Memory & Cognition 8, 75–83 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197554
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197554