The DOI matches its Crossref record; 114 of the 115 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Computational Analyses of Multilevel Discourse Comprehension
Open accessAbstract
The proposed multilevel framework of discourse comprehension includes the surface code, the textbase, the situation model, the genre and rhetorical structure, and the pragmatic communication level. We describe these five levels when comprehension succeeds and also when there are communication misalignments and comprehension breakdowns. A computer tool has been developed, called Coh-Metrix, that scales discourse (oral or print) on dozens of measures associated with the first four discourse levels. The measurement of these levels with an automated tool helps researchers track and better understand multilevel discourse comprehension. Two sets of analyses illustrate the utility of Coh-Metrix in discourse theory and educational practice. First, Coh-Metrix was used to measure the cohesion of the text base and situation model, as well as potential extraneous variables, in a sample of published studies that manipulated text cohesion. This analysis helped us better understand what was precisely manipulated in these studies and the implications for discourse comprehension mechanisms. Second, Coh-Metrix analyses are reported for samples of narrative and science texts in order to advance the argument that traditional text difficulty measures are limited because they fail to accommodate most of the levels of the multilevel discourse comprehension framework.
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“…all aspects of language without exception could be satisfactorily accounted for without appealing to functionally specialized domains could, at the level of detail under discussion here, still be reinterpreted within a framework such as the MCF (cf., Gernsbacher, 1996; Graesser & McNamara, 2011).”
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“In human reading, contradiction effects and coherence breaks reliably slow processing, impair memory, and reveal individual differences in coherence monitoring (Myers et al., 1994; Hakala and O’Brien, 1995; Graesser and McNamara, 2011; Metcalfe, 2017; Currie et al., 2021).”
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Metadata
- Authors
- Graesser, A. C., & McNamara, D. S.
- Affiliations
- University of Memphis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Graesser, Arthur C.
- Venue
- Topics in Cognitive Science
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-04
- Volume
- 3
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 371-398
- ISSN
- 1756-8757 (ISSN-L)
- 1756-8765
- OpenAlex
- W2087016971
- Cited by
- 325
- References
- 115
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 46 · 2021: 27 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 17 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 23 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 18 · 2012: 15
- FWCI
- 3.02
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Topics in Cognitive Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0904909, DRK12, 0918409, 0834847, 0325428)
- U.S. Department of Defense (H9C104-07-0014)
- Institute of Education Sciences (R305G020018, R305A080594, R305B070349, R305A080589, R305H050169)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Text Readability and Simplification
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Social Sciences › Linguistics and Language › Linguistics and Discourse Analysis
- Keywords
- Coh-Metrix, textual cohesion, situation model, textbase, pragmatic communication, narrative texts, scientific texts
- MeSH terms
- Artificial Intelligence, Cognition, Humans, Linguistics, Reading, Semantics, User-Computer Interface, Comprehension
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