CAUSAL THINKING IN DISCOURSE COMPREHENSION

语篇理解技能的发展取决于 儿童构建文本内部表征的能力， 反映了它的结构特性。 曾经，在记忆中，孩子 必须能够使用这些属性来访问和执行进一步的心理 对文本信息的操作。 拟议的研究涉及 从事件、状态和意义层面对叙事进行语篇分析， 行动，其中意义是根据概念化来定义的， 这些单位和关系的语言描述的基础 将概念化联系在一起。 在本案中，这些 关系具有因果性、时间性和逻辑性。 孩子的 叙事话语的表征是以递归的形式来描述的。 事件转换模型（事件及其因果关系的网络）。 该模型根据故事语法生成故事描述 事件的功能，事件的意义关系，事件 组织在目标-行动-结果事件方面，以及更高， 情节的层级组织。 该模型允许显式 检查孩子如何解释文本信息和 孩子对文本的表示的属性。 文本的变化 结构决定了这些属性，并对 理解的性质和质量。 研究建议，比较两个 关键的结构变化（连续与分层事件）， 它们对儿童重要性判断、记忆力、 对事件的总结和解释，对事件的逻辑推理， 事件在叙事背景下，他们的理解发展，通过 因果关系的提问和反馈，以及它们的生产 故事. 拟议的研究增加了对内容的重要控制， 不同的文本结构。

The development of skill in discourse comprehension depends upon the child's ability to construct an internal representation of the text that reflects its structural properties. Once, represented in memory, the child must be able to use these properties to access and perform further mental operations on the text information. The proposed research involves discourse analysis of narratives at the meaning level of events, states and actions where meaning is defined in terms of the conceptualizations that underlie the linguistic description of these units and the relationships that tie the conceptualizations to one another. In the present case, these relations are causal, temporal and logical in nature. The child's representation of narrative discourse is depicted in terms of a recursive event transition model (a network of events and their causal relations). This model generates descriptions of stories in terms of the story grammar functions for events, the meaning relations of events, the event organization in terms of goal-action-outcome episodes, and higher, hierarchical organization of the episodes. This model permits explicit examination of how the child interprets the text information and the properties of the child's repesentation of the text. Variation in the text structure determines these properties and has profound effects upon the nature and quality of comprehension. Studies are proposed that compare two key structural variations (successive versus hierarchial episodes) and their effects on children's judgments of importance, their memory, summarization and explanations of events, their logical reasoning about events in narrative contexts, their development of comprehension via explanatory-causal questioning and feedback, and their production of stories. The proposed research adds an important control for content while varying text structure.