Cognitive Structures in Human Story Comprehension and Memory.

摘要

This research examines the effects of structure and content variables in memory and comprehension of prose passages. The passages utilizied represent a large class of simple narrative stories containing a setting, main character, problem to be solved, plot sequence, and resolution. A process model for the comprehension of these stories is proposed which assumes that stories are encoded in a hierarchical organizational framework which represents the abstract structural relationships of the plot. The implications of the model for the quality and characteristics of subjects' memory for stories is tested in a series of experiments.