Abstract
Readers of narratives keep track of narrative events and the information associated with these events. Does some of this associated information help structure the processing of and memory for the narrative? In three experiments, we examined the role of basic event building blocks (character, time, and location) in event indexing during text comprehension. These three experiments dealt with perceived coherence, perceived cohesion, and on-line processing, respectively. The results indicated that characters are more likely to serve as event indexes. Although the findings with respect to indexing were similar in all three experiments, interesting differences emerged as a function of the level of text comprehension examined (coherence, cohesion, or on-line processing).
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Research presented in this manuscript was submitted by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the master’s degree at Tufts University.
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Rich, S.S., Taylor, H.A. Not all narrative shifts function equally. Memory & Cognition 28, 1257–1266 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211825
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03211825