Date of Award
1988
Document Type
Thesis
Publication Status
Version of Record
Submission Date
October 2026
Thesis/Dissertation Advisor [Chair]
O'Brien, Edward J.
Abstract
The present study examined two models of text comprehension. The first was the propositional representation proposed by Kintsch and van Dijk (1978), in which coherence is determined by coreference and consistency. The second model was a mental model which incorporates readers' world knowledge, goals, and plans in the comprehension of text. In Experiment 1, subjects were told to assume the protagonist perspective while reading a series of short passages. Results showed that when instructed to do so, subjects formed an image that includes information regarding protagonist location. When this location information was violated, a slowdown in reading time of a target sentence occurred. Experiment 2 showed that when subjects are not instructed to assume the protagonist perspective, they apparently are not aware of inconsistencies in location information.
Extent
55 p.
Recommended Citation
Baldwin, Stella Bocholis, "role of protagonist perspective in text comprehension" (1988). Electronic Theses and Dissertations 1980 - 1989. 668.
https://digitalcommons.fau.edu/etd_general_3/668
Identifier
FADT14457
Comments
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1988.|Charles E. Schmidt College of Science|FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection|Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1988.