| |
Abstract:
It is well-established that the representation
of discourse in the minds of readers is centered on gist.
There is also a growing amount of evidence that semantic
processes and interpretation can be shallow, rather than deep
and complete. The patchy literature on semantic
illusions, in which anomalies in meaning are not detected, is
testament to at least occasional shallow semantic processing,
as is the literature on the pragmatic normalisation of
interpretation, and apparent failures to fully repair faulty
interpretations due garden-pathing. In this paper, we
shall review some key aspects of these findings, including
evidence that hints as focus as a possible controller of depth
of semantic interpretation.
We report a preliminary series of experiments on
a text-change detection paradigm, inspired by the use of change
blindness in vision science. In the first method,
participants read a text, and were then presented with the same
text but for a single word change. After that, the text
changed back to the original, and so on, through a series of
cycles. In one experiment, critical changes were made to
a verb that appeared either in the main clause or a subordinate
clause of a two-clause complex sentence, embedded in a three
sentence text. The change in verb was either to a
semantically close verb (e.g., finished → completed), or
to a distant verb (e.g., finished → started):
(1) The newsagent had just hired a new paperboy
to cover the downtown area. After the paperboy finished
(completed/started) his rounds, he ate his breakfast.
There were a lot of deliveries to be made. [finished in
Subordinate]
(2) The newsagent had just hired a new paperboy
to cover the downtown area. The paperboy finished
(completed/started) his rounds after he ate his
breakfast. There were a lot of deliveries to be
made. [finished in Main]
Changes to distant verbs were more readily
detected than to close verbs, and changes in main clauses were
more easily detected than changes in subordinate clauses.
In a second experiment, changes to instruments associated with
actions were made, demonstrating simple effects of pragmatic
plausibility.
In the other technique, a single change was
investigated, under a variety of conditions, for cleft
constructions embedded in short texts. This provided
another means of manipulating focus. It was found that
large semantic changes to key nouns were detected more readily
than small ones, and that detection rates were higher for noun
phrases in focussed positions than those in unfocussed
positions. We shall conclude by arguing the general
utility of the technique as a way of investigating the level of
representation of discourse during reading.
|
