The Achievement of Global Coherence through Local Causal Inferences in Narrative Comprehension and Production

• Main Author: Trabasso, Tom
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: 01-10-1986
• Subjects: Elementary Secondary Education; Episodic Organizers; Grade 11; Grade 12; Grade 3; Grade 6; Grade 9; Narrative Text; Reading Comprehension; Reading Processes; Reading Research; Story Structure; Text Structure

Using a recursive network transition model for depicting stories to generate two stories of contrasting structure (successive episodes organized by topic and embedded episodes organized by failed and successful goals), a study examined the understanding of the structures by having children in the third through eleventh grades rate each story statement for its importance relative to the story as a whole. One hundred ninety-three third graders, 205 sixth graders, 179 ninth graders, and 180 eleventh and twelfth graders participated in the original study (van der Broek, 1985). The two stories used for this study contained nearly identical content--the difference between them being that the episodes and constituent sentences had been restructured, providing two contrasting networks of statements and their relations (sequentially and hierarchically), implying different meanings of the events. Data showed that the understanding of relations within episodes preceded understanding of relations between episodes. Results indicated that story comprehension developed out of local understanding of, and inferring causal relations between story statements about actions and states. Local coherence at the level of pairs of sentences leads to global coherence of the narrative discourse. (Seven tables of data and eight figures are included.) (MM)