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Comprehension of stories and expository text
Poetics 9 (1980) 203-211 0 North-Holland Publishing Company
COMPREHENSION OF STORIES AND EXPOSITORY TEXT
BONNIE J.F. MEYER, MARILYN J. HARING, DAVID M. BRANDT and CAROL H. WALKER
Four topics related to reading stories and expository text are discussed. First, the prose analysis technique employed by the authors is described. This technique yields a hierarchically arranged tree structure of idea units. Next, four major research fmdings utilizing this technique are presented. Generally, the relations between the top-level structure of a passage and recall are briefly described. Third, some of the authors’ studies using both stories and expository text are summarized. Finally, Meyer’s prose analysis technique is applied to an Aesop fable, and the similarities and differences between stories and expository text are considered. The prose analysis technique was shown to be capable of handling both expository text and stories.
Approach to prose analysis Meyer’s research has pursued the effects of structure in text on what people remember from it (Meyer 1971, 1975, 1977a, b, c, 1978; Meyer and McConkie 1973). The prose analysis technique employed to identify the structure of text is based on Fillmore’s (1968) case grammar and Grimes’ (1975) semantic grammar of propositions. This technique for prose analysis yields hierarchically arranged tree structures. Nodes in these tree structures contain content from the passage, and the lines among the nodes show spatially how the content is organized. Also, labels are found in the structures which classify the relationships among the content. ‘Ihis hierarchically arranged display of the passage’s content is called the content structure since it shows the structure of the content in the passage. The content structure of a passage shows how some ideas in the passage are superordinate to other ideas. Some ideas from a passage are located at the top levels of the content structure, others are found at middle levels, and still other ideas are found at the lower levels of the structure. Most of the ideas located at the top levels of the content structure have many levels of ideas beneath them and related to them in a direct downward path in the structure. These top level ideas dominate their subordinate ideas. The lower level ideas describe or give more information about the ideas above them in the structure. 203
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Using this prose analysis technique, a passage is viewed as being a complex proposition which can be decomposed into sub-propositions bearing certain relations to one another. Propositions are composed of a predicate and its arguments. There are two types of predicates: lexical predicates and rhetorical predicates. Lexical predicates are centered in a lexical item, typically verbs and their adjuncts, and take arguments which are ideas from the content of the text. The lexical predicates are related to the arguments by case or role relationships. Rhetorical predicates are not centered in lexical items, but still take arguments. These arguments can be single ideas from the content of the text, but are more often lexical propositions or other rhetorical propositions. The rhetorical predicates frequently appear at higher levels in the structure of a passage, representing inter-sentence relationships. The rhetorical predicates consist of a finite number of labels which classify the prose relationships, particularly inter-sentence and inter-paragraph relations. Procedures for analyzing passages and examples can be found in Meyer (1975). The technique has been shown to be reliable when used by trained investigators. Independent analyses of two prose analysts showed a 95% agreement in the content structures of a passage; differences did not occur in the level of the information in the structure, but in particular role relations or rhetorical predicates identified to label the relationships between ideas in the passage. This system also provides a reliable method for scoring free recall protocols produced after exposure to a passage (Meyer 1975; Meyer et al. 1978a). Content units and relationship units, role and rhetorical relations, are scored. The content structure is printed on grid paper. The tree structure is north-west rooted rather than north rooted with identations to the right representing a node lower in the tree. A second piece of grid paper is lined up with the content structure; one column on the paper is used for the recall protocol of each subject. If a content unit from the content structure is found in the recall protocol, that unit is scored by placing a number in that subject’s column in the row that corresponds to the content unit in the content structure. This number indicates that the unit was recalled and also indicates the order in which the subject recalled the idea in his protocol.
Basic research findings Four basic research findings have emerged from examining the relationship between text structure and what people remember from their reading. First, propositions located at the top levels of the content structure are recalled and retained better than the information at lower levels in the content structure. This effect of structure has been confnmed with various types of materials, recall tasks, and subjects (Kintsch and Keenan 1973 ; Mandler and Johnson 1977 ; Meyer 1977a; Thorndyke 1977). Second, the pattern of relations at the top levels of the content structure was found to dramatically influence the selection and retention of ideas located at the top level in the structure, while the pattern of relationships low in
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the structure had no influence on recall. A third finding (Meyer et al. 1978b) showed that manipulating the extreme top-level structure in text while leaving the remainder of propositions and structure constant affected recall and retention of text. Fourth, high school students can be taught to identify different top-level structures of text and this skill appears to increase the amount of information they can remember (Bartlett 1978).
Types of text Expository texts
Our research group of educational psychologists has been primarily concerned with prose learning in secondary and adult classrooms where expository text is the main teaching vehicle rather than stories. Thus, our research (Bartlett 1978; Brandt 1978; Meyer 1977a; Meyer et al. 1978b) has studied prose comprehension primarily with expository text. The research group has studied four types of expository text. Expository text was classified into different types on the basis of the rhetorical predicate at the topmost level of its content structure. We examine the following top level rhetorical structures: response, which relates a problem (or question) to a solution; adversative, which relates what did happen to what did not, or a favored view to an opposing view; covurtince, which relates an antecedent condition to its consequent; and attribution, which relates a collection of attributes to an event or idea. The research with college students showed that adversative and covariance structures yielded better recall and retention than attribution structures. Stories
We have conducted two studies (Haring and Fry 1979; Walker 1978) with stories. Instead of opting to use available story grammars (Mandler and Johnson 1977; Rumelhart 1975; Stein in press; Thorndyke 1977; van Dijk 1976), we applied the same prose analysis technique as we have used with expository text. A major reason for taking this approach was that the designs of the two studies required that the stories’ propositions be divided into distinct groups on the basis of their position in the hierarchical content structure. Tree structures on which to divide the propositions into high or low in the structure needed to contain a relatively wide range of levels. Meyer’s (1975) prose analysis system provides a more detailed analysis of stories than story grammars. One of the studies (Walker 1978) investigated the effect of height of propositions in the content structure of stories on the probability of integrating two distinct propositions. The stories contained approximately 400 words and eight hierarchical levels. The results showed that propositions high in the structure are more
206
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of stories
likely to be integrated than propositions low in the structure. The second study (Haring and Fry 1979) investigated the effect of illustrations on the reading comprehension of fourth and sixth graders. Stories are an integral part of the school curriculum at this age level. For this study Meyer’s (1975) system was used to analyze a 360-word adaption of an Aesop fable which was re-titled ‘The Genie and the Lumberjacks’. The content structure of the fable consisted of 13 levels and 350 idea units. The propositions were divided into two groups on the basis of their position in the structure: (1) high level propositions, consisting of the top five levels of structure and any case-related arguments of lexical predicates at level six, and (2) lower level propositions, consisting of the lower eight levels of structure. The purpose of the prose analysis and division of the idea units into higher and lower levels was twofold. First, one set of pictures was drawn to illustrate only higher level propositions and another set of pictures was drawn to illustrate propositions from both levels of the structure. Second, recall of the story was analyzed in terms of recall of higher level idea units and recall of lower level idea units. The effect of the illustrations on reading comprehension was determined by comparing recall scores of higher and lower level idea units by groups of students reading the written story with (a) no illustrations, (b) illustrations of the high level propositions, or (c) illustrations of propositions at both levels. For the 150 fourth- and sixthgrade participants in the study, illustrations significantly facilitated recall of the higher level idea units @ < O.Ol), but not of the lower level idea units. The more detailed set of pictures which depicted both levels of propositions was no more facilitative of recall than the set which depicted only higher level propositions. The pictures facilitated recall of the higher level idea units immediately after the students read the story and five days later. The prose analysis technique adequately handled the research questions posed with the stories used in these two studies. The next section of this paper describes the content structure of the Aesop fable and discusses similarities and differences between stories and expository text.
Analysis of a fable Haring and Fry (1979) modified Aesop’s fable entitled ‘Mercury and the Woodman’ from the original version with a Dale-Chall readability level of 7th grade to a level appropriate for the younger students in their study. We analyzed the following modified version of the fable. The Genie and the Lumberjacks
A tall, husky lumberjack named Ur was chopping down a pine tree on the bank of a swift river. His ax glanced off the trunk of the tree, flew out of his hands, and fell into the deep, rushing water. Ur stood by the edge of the water sadly shaking his head about losing his ax.
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Just then a genie rose out of a bottle floating in the river and asked why Ur was sad. When the genie heard the lumberjack’s story, she dived into the river and brought up a golden ax. “Is this the one you lost?” the genie asked. The lumberjack said it was not. The genie dived into the river again. This time the genie came up with an ax covered with diamonds and asked if it belonged to Ur. “No, that is not mine either,” said the lumberjack. Once more the genie dived into the river and this time returned with Ur’s missing ax. The lumberjack was overjoyed at recovering his lost tool and thanked the genie warmly. The genie was so pleased with Ur’s honesty that she gave him the other precious axes, also. That night Ur told the story to his two lumberjack friends as they sat around a huge fine eating fish for dinner. One of the lumberjacks was Bew, a small greedy man who sometimes would take part of his companions’ dinner when they were not looking. Bew examined Ur’s new axes with great interest and decided to trick the genie into giving him rich presents, too. So the next day Bew went to the edge of the river and began to chop down a giant redwood tree. Soon he let his ax fall into the water. The genie appeared from her bottle and learned of Bew’s problem. She dived into the river and brought up a golden ax. Without waiting to be asked whether it was his or not, Bew eagerly grabbed for the prize saying, “That’s mine, that’s mine”. But the genie was so disgusted at Bew’s dishonesty that she threw the golden ax back into the river. And the genie then went back into her bottle, also leaving Bew’s ax forever at the bottom of the river.
Fig. I depicts the major rhetorical structure of the fable. As previously reported, the complete content structure contained 350 idea units and 13 levels. An example
NARRATIVE STORY
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Fig. 1. Major rhetorical structure of the fable ‘The Genie and the Lumberjacks’.
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of the detail in which the story was analyzed can be seen in fig. 2. The figure depicts the consequent of the episode about Bew which was starred in fig. 1. The fable is actually composed of two stories connected with an adversative rhetorical relation. When we analyzed the modified version we did not have a story with an explicitly stated moral. Months after analyzing the story, we were shown
321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350
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attribution
Time Line of Events in the Story
012
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Fig. 2. Propositional analysis of the consequence of Bew’s dishonesty; a look at the Time Line and a portion of the content structure [ 11.
[l] The numbers in parentheses in the content structure correspond to the numbers on the Time Line (see Meyer (1975) for a further explanation of Litteral’s (1972) time topology).
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the original version for the first time; the last line of the Aesop fable is “Honesty is the best policy”. This moral explicitly signals the adversative rhetorical structure we had inferred as the topmost structure of the story. Each of these two sub-stories connected with the adversative structure could stand alone. Both sub-stories can be broken down into setting + major episode, which can again be broken into embedded episodes according to story grammars (i.e. Rumelhart 1973, For example, if Ur’s story was presented without that of Bew it would meet all the requirements of a well-formed story and its moral might be “honesty pays off ‘. The fact that the fable is presented with the adversative top-level structure as shown in fig. 1 is intriguing because our work with college students shows that the adversative top-level structure in expository text is particularly facilitative of learning and retention. With expository text organized with an adversative top-level structure, we argue that good readers look for the two opposing positions presented, contrast them on their points and counterpoints, and try to evaluate why one is favored over the other. These processes of comparison, contrast, and evaluation should cause the reader to process the information more deeply and improve his/ her comprehension. In addition, we posit that readers who use an adversative toplevel structure or schema in their recall attempts will have a more systematic retrieval plan. Using an adversative schema ensures the reader of recalling both positions presented in the text, as well as many stored subordinate propositions that are located in a top-down retrieval search. If the reader recalls one point for one position, it will often facilitate the retrieval of the corresponding point for the other view or prompt the reconstruction of the point if the details have been forgotten. In light of our findings with expository text, it would be interesting to see if recall of stories is improved when an adversative top-level structure is used. Modifications of this fable could be made to ascertain effects on recall and retention by presenting the Ur and Bew stories in the adversative structure or independently in a simpler story structure. The adversative top-level structure may not have the same facilitative effect with stories that it has with the expository text we have studied. Stories have the rhetorical and case (role) relationships of expository text with the addition of story schema (Rumelhart 1975). These extra predictable categories such as setting and episode may cause different types of processing strategies to occur with different genre of discourse. Narratives have been shown to be better remembered than expository text (Kozminsky 1977); however, the underlying processes causing these differences have not been explicated. Moving down from the top-level structure shown in fig. 1, the next major rhetorical predicates are covariance, causal relations. Basically, we analyzed each sub-story into a major covariance proposition taking place in a particular setting. For Ur’s story as seen in fig. 1 the covariance predicate related the arguments of honesty and precious axes. This causal relation was signaled in the text with underlined words in the following sentence from the story: “The genie was so pleased with Ur’s honesty that she gave him the other precious axes, too”.
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The story was primarily analyzed with the covariance, response (as seen in figs. 1 and 2) and collection rhetorical predicates. The collection predicate was used to show the relationship between a group of events which were time related rather than causally related. The time line shown in fig. 2 was used to keep track of the time sequences; some nodes in the content structure represented time indices so that students could be credited with recall points if they remembered the correct sequence of events. In summary, the analysis of the story was very similar to that for expository text. However, the story had more rhetorical relations of the covariance and timeordered collection variety. An asset of using the same prose analysis system for both stories and expository text is that comparison between the two can be more easily made. In addition, the macro-structure of a story structure can easily be laid over the content structure of a story to show the additional schema available for comprehending stories.
References Aesop. 1967. ‘Mercury and the woodman’. In: V.S. Vernon-Jones, ed. pp. 14-15. Anderson, R.C., RJ. Spiro and W.E. Montague. 1977. Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bach, E. and R.G. Harms. 1968. Universals in linguistic theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bartlett, BJ. 1978. Top-level structure as an organizational strategy for recall of classroom text. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Bobrow, D.G. and A.M. Collins. 1975. Representation and understanding. New York: Academic Press. Brandt, D.M. 1978. Prior knowledge of the author’s schema and the comprehension of prose. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Fillmore, C. 1968. ‘The case for case’. In: E. Bach and R.G. Harms, eds. pp. l-88. Freedle, R.O. 1977. Discourse production and comprehension. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing co. Grimes, J. 1975. The thread of discourse. The Hague: Mouton. Haring, M.J. and M.A. Fry. 1979. Effect of pictures on children’s comprehension of written text. Educational Communication and Technology Journal 27: 185-190. Katz, L. In press. Current topics in early childhood education, Vol. 2. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Co. Kintsch, W. and J.M. Keenan. 1973. Reading rate as a function of the number of propositions in the base structure of sentences. Cognitive Psychology 5: 257-274. Kozminsky, E. 1977. Attenuating comprehension: the effect of biasing titles on text comprehension. Memory and Cognition 5: 482-490. Litteral, R. 1972. Rhetorical predicates and time topology in Anggor. Foundations of Language 8: 391-410. Mandler, J.M. and N.S. Johnson. 1977. Remembrance of things parsed. story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology 9: 1 11- 15 1. Meyer, B.J.F. 1971. Idea units recalled from prose in relation to their position in the logical structure, importance, stability, and order in the passage. Unpublished master’s thesis, Cornell University.
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Meyer, B.J.F. 1975. The organization of prose and its effects on memory. Amsterdam: NorthHolland Publishing Co. Meyer, B.J.F. 1977a. ‘The structure of prose: effects on learning and memory and implications for educational practice’. In: R.C. Anderson, R. Spiro and W.E. Montague, eds. pp. 179200. Meyer, B.J.F. 1977b. ‘What is remembered from prose: a function of passage structure’. In: R.O. Freedle, ed. pp. 307-336. Meyer, B.J.F. 1977c. ‘Organization of prose and memory: research with application to reading comprehension’. In: P.D. Pearson, ed. pp. 214-220. Meyer, B.J.F. 1978. Organizational patterns in prose and their use in reading. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, December, 1978. Meyer, B.J.F. and G. McConkie. 1973. What is recalled after hearing a passage? Journal of Educational Psychology 65: 109-117. Meyer, B.J.F., D.M. Brandt and G.J. Bluth. 1978a. Use of author’s schema: key to ninth graders’ comprehension. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, March 1978. Meyer, B.J.F., R.O. Freedle and C.H. Walker. 1978b. Effects of discourse type on the recall of young and old adults. Manuscript submitted for publication, 1978. Pearson, P.D. 1977. Reading: theory, research, and practice. Clemson, SC: National Reading Conference. Rumelhart, D.E. 1975. ‘Notes on a schema for stories’. In: D.G. Bobrow and A.M. Collins, eds. pp. 211-236. Stem, N.L. In press. ‘HOWchildren understand stories: a developmental analysis’. In: L. Katz, ed. Thomdyke, P. 1977. Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse. Cognitive Psychology 9: 77-110. van Dijk, T.A. 1976. Narrative macrostructures: logical and cognitive foundations. PTL 1: 547-568. Vernon-Jones, V.S. 1967. Aesop’s fables. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc. Walker, C.H. 1978.’ Integrating information from text. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University.
blk. Meyer has written chapters in several edited books, a book, and numerous journal articles on the role of prose structure in reading comprehension. Drs. Haring, Brandt, and Walker are recent graduates of the doctoral program at Arizona State University and have published several articles in psychological journals.
COMPREHENSION OF STORIES AND EXPOSITORY TEXT
BONNIE J.F. MEYER, MARILYN J. HARING, DAVID M. BRANDT and CAROL H. WALKER
Four topics related to reading stories and expository text are discussed. First, the prose analysis technique employed by the authors is described. This technique yields a hierarchically arranged tree structure of idea units. Next, four major research fmdings utilizing this technique are presented. Generally, the relations between the top-level structure of a passage and recall are briefly described. Third, some of the authors’ studies using both stories and expository text are summarized. Finally, Meyer’s prose analysis technique is applied to an Aesop fable, and the similarities and differences between stories and expository text are considered. The prose analysis technique was shown to be capable of handling both expository text and stories.
Approach to prose analysis Meyer’s research has pursued the effects of structure in text on what people remember from it (Meyer 1971, 1975, 1977a, b, c, 1978; Meyer and McConkie 1973). The prose analysis technique employed to identify the structure of text is based on Fillmore’s (1968) case grammar and Grimes’ (1975) semantic grammar of propositions. This technique for prose analysis yields hierarchically arranged tree structures. Nodes in these tree structures contain content from the passage, and the lines among the nodes show spatially how the content is organized. Also, labels are found in the structures which classify the relationships among the content. ‘Ihis hierarchically arranged display of the passage’s content is called the content structure since it shows the structure of the content in the passage. The content structure of a passage shows how some ideas in the passage are superordinate to other ideas. Some ideas from a passage are located at the top levels of the content structure, others are found at middle levels, and still other ideas are found at the lower levels of the structure. Most of the ideas located at the top levels of the content structure have many levels of ideas beneath them and related to them in a direct downward path in the structure. These top level ideas dominate their subordinate ideas. The lower level ideas describe or give more information about the ideas above them in the structure. 203
204
B.J.F. Meyer et al. / Comprehension of stories
Using this prose analysis technique, a passage is viewed as being a complex proposition which can be decomposed into sub-propositions bearing certain relations to one another. Propositions are composed of a predicate and its arguments. There are two types of predicates: lexical predicates and rhetorical predicates. Lexical predicates are centered in a lexical item, typically verbs and their adjuncts, and take arguments which are ideas from the content of the text. The lexical predicates are related to the arguments by case or role relationships. Rhetorical predicates are not centered in lexical items, but still take arguments. These arguments can be single ideas from the content of the text, but are more often lexical propositions or other rhetorical propositions. The rhetorical predicates frequently appear at higher levels in the structure of a passage, representing inter-sentence relationships. The rhetorical predicates consist of a finite number of labels which classify the prose relationships, particularly inter-sentence and inter-paragraph relations. Procedures for analyzing passages and examples can be found in Meyer (1975). The technique has been shown to be reliable when used by trained investigators. Independent analyses of two prose analysts showed a 95% agreement in the content structures of a passage; differences did not occur in the level of the information in the structure, but in particular role relations or rhetorical predicates identified to label the relationships between ideas in the passage. This system also provides a reliable method for scoring free recall protocols produced after exposure to a passage (Meyer 1975; Meyer et al. 1978a). Content units and relationship units, role and rhetorical relations, are scored. The content structure is printed on grid paper. The tree structure is north-west rooted rather than north rooted with identations to the right representing a node lower in the tree. A second piece of grid paper is lined up with the content structure; one column on the paper is used for the recall protocol of each subject. If a content unit from the content structure is found in the recall protocol, that unit is scored by placing a number in that subject’s column in the row that corresponds to the content unit in the content structure. This number indicates that the unit was recalled and also indicates the order in which the subject recalled the idea in his protocol.
Basic research findings Four basic research findings have emerged from examining the relationship between text structure and what people remember from their reading. First, propositions located at the top levels of the content structure are recalled and retained better than the information at lower levels in the content structure. This effect of structure has been confnmed with various types of materials, recall tasks, and subjects (Kintsch and Keenan 1973 ; Mandler and Johnson 1977 ; Meyer 1977a; Thorndyke 1977). Second, the pattern of relations at the top levels of the content structure was found to dramatically influence the selection and retention of ideas located at the top level in the structure, while the pattern of relationships low in
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the structure had no influence on recall. A third finding (Meyer et al. 1978b) showed that manipulating the extreme top-level structure in text while leaving the remainder of propositions and structure constant affected recall and retention of text. Fourth, high school students can be taught to identify different top-level structures of text and this skill appears to increase the amount of information they can remember (Bartlett 1978).
Types of text Expository texts
Our research group of educational psychologists has been primarily concerned with prose learning in secondary and adult classrooms where expository text is the main teaching vehicle rather than stories. Thus, our research (Bartlett 1978; Brandt 1978; Meyer 1977a; Meyer et al. 1978b) has studied prose comprehension primarily with expository text. The research group has studied four types of expository text. Expository text was classified into different types on the basis of the rhetorical predicate at the topmost level of its content structure. We examine the following top level rhetorical structures: response, which relates a problem (or question) to a solution; adversative, which relates what did happen to what did not, or a favored view to an opposing view; covurtince, which relates an antecedent condition to its consequent; and attribution, which relates a collection of attributes to an event or idea. The research with college students showed that adversative and covariance structures yielded better recall and retention than attribution structures. Stories
We have conducted two studies (Haring and Fry 1979; Walker 1978) with stories. Instead of opting to use available story grammars (Mandler and Johnson 1977; Rumelhart 1975; Stein in press; Thorndyke 1977; van Dijk 1976), we applied the same prose analysis technique as we have used with expository text. A major reason for taking this approach was that the designs of the two studies required that the stories’ propositions be divided into distinct groups on the basis of their position in the hierarchical content structure. Tree structures on which to divide the propositions into high or low in the structure needed to contain a relatively wide range of levels. Meyer’s (1975) prose analysis system provides a more detailed analysis of stories than story grammars. One of the studies (Walker 1978) investigated the effect of height of propositions in the content structure of stories on the probability of integrating two distinct propositions. The stories contained approximately 400 words and eight hierarchical levels. The results showed that propositions high in the structure are more
206
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of stories
likely to be integrated than propositions low in the structure. The second study (Haring and Fry 1979) investigated the effect of illustrations on the reading comprehension of fourth and sixth graders. Stories are an integral part of the school curriculum at this age level. For this study Meyer’s (1975) system was used to analyze a 360-word adaption of an Aesop fable which was re-titled ‘The Genie and the Lumberjacks’. The content structure of the fable consisted of 13 levels and 350 idea units. The propositions were divided into two groups on the basis of their position in the structure: (1) high level propositions, consisting of the top five levels of structure and any case-related arguments of lexical predicates at level six, and (2) lower level propositions, consisting of the lower eight levels of structure. The purpose of the prose analysis and division of the idea units into higher and lower levels was twofold. First, one set of pictures was drawn to illustrate only higher level propositions and another set of pictures was drawn to illustrate propositions from both levels of the structure. Second, recall of the story was analyzed in terms of recall of higher level idea units and recall of lower level idea units. The effect of the illustrations on reading comprehension was determined by comparing recall scores of higher and lower level idea units by groups of students reading the written story with (a) no illustrations, (b) illustrations of the high level propositions, or (c) illustrations of propositions at both levels. For the 150 fourth- and sixthgrade participants in the study, illustrations significantly facilitated recall of the higher level idea units @ < O.Ol), but not of the lower level idea units. The more detailed set of pictures which depicted both levels of propositions was no more facilitative of recall than the set which depicted only higher level propositions. The pictures facilitated recall of the higher level idea units immediately after the students read the story and five days later. The prose analysis technique adequately handled the research questions posed with the stories used in these two studies. The next section of this paper describes the content structure of the Aesop fable and discusses similarities and differences between stories and expository text.
Analysis of a fable Haring and Fry (1979) modified Aesop’s fable entitled ‘Mercury and the Woodman’ from the original version with a Dale-Chall readability level of 7th grade to a level appropriate for the younger students in their study. We analyzed the following modified version of the fable. The Genie and the Lumberjacks
A tall, husky lumberjack named Ur was chopping down a pine tree on the bank of a swift river. His ax glanced off the trunk of the tree, flew out of his hands, and fell into the deep, rushing water. Ur stood by the edge of the water sadly shaking his head about losing his ax.
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Just then a genie rose out of a bottle floating in the river and asked why Ur was sad. When the genie heard the lumberjack’s story, she dived into the river and brought up a golden ax. “Is this the one you lost?” the genie asked. The lumberjack said it was not. The genie dived into the river again. This time the genie came up with an ax covered with diamonds and asked if it belonged to Ur. “No, that is not mine either,” said the lumberjack. Once more the genie dived into the river and this time returned with Ur’s missing ax. The lumberjack was overjoyed at recovering his lost tool and thanked the genie warmly. The genie was so pleased with Ur’s honesty that she gave him the other precious axes, also. That night Ur told the story to his two lumberjack friends as they sat around a huge fine eating fish for dinner. One of the lumberjacks was Bew, a small greedy man who sometimes would take part of his companions’ dinner when they were not looking. Bew examined Ur’s new axes with great interest and decided to trick the genie into giving him rich presents, too. So the next day Bew went to the edge of the river and began to chop down a giant redwood tree. Soon he let his ax fall into the water. The genie appeared from her bottle and learned of Bew’s problem. She dived into the river and brought up a golden ax. Without waiting to be asked whether it was his or not, Bew eagerly grabbed for the prize saying, “That’s mine, that’s mine”. But the genie was so disgusted at Bew’s dishonesty that she threw the golden ax back into the river. And the genie then went back into her bottle, also leaving Bew’s ax forever at the bottom of the river.
Fig. I depicts the major rhetorical structure of the fable. As previously reported, the complete content structure contained 350 idea units and 13 levels. An example
NARRATIVE STORY
collection
HONESn
PRECIOUSAXES CCJlW@le~t*
1 specific
A
,4?%ti, IIRLOSES Ax I speCific
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i GENIE RETIJRNNP AX
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Fig. 1. Major rhetorical structure of the fable ‘The Genie and the Lumberjacks’.
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of the detail in which the story was analyzed can be seen in fig. 2. The figure depicts the consequent of the episode about Bew which was starred in fig. 1. The fable is actually composed of two stories connected with an adversative rhetorical relation. When we analyzed the modified version we did not have a story with an explicitly stated moral. Months after analyzing the story, we were shown
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Fig. 2. Propositional analysis of the consequence of Bew’s dishonesty; a look at the Time Line and a portion of the content structure [ 11.
[l] The numbers in parentheses in the content structure correspond to the numbers on the Time Line (see Meyer (1975) for a further explanation of Litteral’s (1972) time topology).
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the original version for the first time; the last line of the Aesop fable is “Honesty is the best policy”. This moral explicitly signals the adversative rhetorical structure we had inferred as the topmost structure of the story. Each of these two sub-stories connected with the adversative structure could stand alone. Both sub-stories can be broken down into setting + major episode, which can again be broken into embedded episodes according to story grammars (i.e. Rumelhart 1973, For example, if Ur’s story was presented without that of Bew it would meet all the requirements of a well-formed story and its moral might be “honesty pays off ‘. The fact that the fable is presented with the adversative top-level structure as shown in fig. 1 is intriguing because our work with college students shows that the adversative top-level structure in expository text is particularly facilitative of learning and retention. With expository text organized with an adversative top-level structure, we argue that good readers look for the two opposing positions presented, contrast them on their points and counterpoints, and try to evaluate why one is favored over the other. These processes of comparison, contrast, and evaluation should cause the reader to process the information more deeply and improve his/ her comprehension. In addition, we posit that readers who use an adversative toplevel structure or schema in their recall attempts will have a more systematic retrieval plan. Using an adversative schema ensures the reader of recalling both positions presented in the text, as well as many stored subordinate propositions that are located in a top-down retrieval search. If the reader recalls one point for one position, it will often facilitate the retrieval of the corresponding point for the other view or prompt the reconstruction of the point if the details have been forgotten. In light of our findings with expository text, it would be interesting to see if recall of stories is improved when an adversative top-level structure is used. Modifications of this fable could be made to ascertain effects on recall and retention by presenting the Ur and Bew stories in the adversative structure or independently in a simpler story structure. The adversative top-level structure may not have the same facilitative effect with stories that it has with the expository text we have studied. Stories have the rhetorical and case (role) relationships of expository text with the addition of story schema (Rumelhart 1975). These extra predictable categories such as setting and episode may cause different types of processing strategies to occur with different genre of discourse. Narratives have been shown to be better remembered than expository text (Kozminsky 1977); however, the underlying processes causing these differences have not been explicated. Moving down from the top-level structure shown in fig. 1, the next major rhetorical predicates are covariance, causal relations. Basically, we analyzed each sub-story into a major covariance proposition taking place in a particular setting. For Ur’s story as seen in fig. 1 the covariance predicate related the arguments of honesty and precious axes. This causal relation was signaled in the text with underlined words in the following sentence from the story: “The genie was so pleased with Ur’s honesty that she gave him the other precious axes, too”.
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The story was primarily analyzed with the covariance, response (as seen in figs. 1 and 2) and collection rhetorical predicates. The collection predicate was used to show the relationship between a group of events which were time related rather than causally related. The time line shown in fig. 2 was used to keep track of the time sequences; some nodes in the content structure represented time indices so that students could be credited with recall points if they remembered the correct sequence of events. In summary, the analysis of the story was very similar to that for expository text. However, the story had more rhetorical relations of the covariance and timeordered collection variety. An asset of using the same prose analysis system for both stories and expository text is that comparison between the two can be more easily made. In addition, the macro-structure of a story structure can easily be laid over the content structure of a story to show the additional schema available for comprehending stories.
References Aesop. 1967. ‘Mercury and the woodman’. In: V.S. Vernon-Jones, ed. pp. 14-15. Anderson, R.C., RJ. Spiro and W.E. Montague. 1977. Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Bach, E. and R.G. Harms. 1968. Universals in linguistic theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bartlett, BJ. 1978. Top-level structure as an organizational strategy for recall of classroom text. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Bobrow, D.G. and A.M. Collins. 1975. Representation and understanding. New York: Academic Press. Brandt, D.M. 1978. Prior knowledge of the author’s schema and the comprehension of prose. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University. Fillmore, C. 1968. ‘The case for case’. In: E. Bach and R.G. Harms, eds. pp. l-88. Freedle, R.O. 1977. Discourse production and comprehension. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing co. Grimes, J. 1975. The thread of discourse. The Hague: Mouton. Haring, M.J. and M.A. Fry. 1979. Effect of pictures on children’s comprehension of written text. Educational Communication and Technology Journal 27: 185-190. Katz, L. In press. Current topics in early childhood education, Vol. 2. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Co. Kintsch, W. and J.M. Keenan. 1973. Reading rate as a function of the number of propositions in the base structure of sentences. Cognitive Psychology 5: 257-274. Kozminsky, E. 1977. Attenuating comprehension: the effect of biasing titles on text comprehension. Memory and Cognition 5: 482-490. Litteral, R. 1972. Rhetorical predicates and time topology in Anggor. Foundations of Language 8: 391-410. Mandler, J.M. and N.S. Johnson. 1977. Remembrance of things parsed. story structure and recall. Cognitive Psychology 9: 1 11- 15 1. Meyer, B.J.F. 1971. Idea units recalled from prose in relation to their position in the logical structure, importance, stability, and order in the passage. Unpublished master’s thesis, Cornell University.
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Meyer, B.J.F. 1975. The organization of prose and its effects on memory. Amsterdam: NorthHolland Publishing Co. Meyer, B.J.F. 1977a. ‘The structure of prose: effects on learning and memory and implications for educational practice’. In: R.C. Anderson, R. Spiro and W.E. Montague, eds. pp. 179200. Meyer, B.J.F. 1977b. ‘What is remembered from prose: a function of passage structure’. In: R.O. Freedle, ed. pp. 307-336. Meyer, B.J.F. 1977c. ‘Organization of prose and memory: research with application to reading comprehension’. In: P.D. Pearson, ed. pp. 214-220. Meyer, B.J.F. 1978. Organizational patterns in prose and their use in reading. Paper presented at the National Reading Conference, St. Petersburg, Florida, December, 1978. Meyer, B.J.F. and G. McConkie. 1973. What is recalled after hearing a passage? Journal of Educational Psychology 65: 109-117. Meyer, B.J.F., D.M. Brandt and G.J. Bluth. 1978a. Use of author’s schema: key to ninth graders’ comprehension. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Toronto, March 1978. Meyer, B.J.F., R.O. Freedle and C.H. Walker. 1978b. Effects of discourse type on the recall of young and old adults. Manuscript submitted for publication, 1978. Pearson, P.D. 1977. Reading: theory, research, and practice. Clemson, SC: National Reading Conference. Rumelhart, D.E. 1975. ‘Notes on a schema for stories’. In: D.G. Bobrow and A.M. Collins, eds. pp. 211-236. Stem, N.L. In press. ‘HOWchildren understand stories: a developmental analysis’. In: L. Katz, ed. Thomdyke, P. 1977. Cognitive structures in comprehension and memory of narrative discourse. Cognitive Psychology 9: 77-110. van Dijk, T.A. 1976. Narrative macrostructures: logical and cognitive foundations. PTL 1: 547-568. Vernon-Jones, V.S. 1967. Aesop’s fables. New York: Franklin Watts, Inc. Walker, C.H. 1978.’ Integrating information from text. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Arizona State University.
blk. Meyer has written chapters in several edited books, a book, and numerous journal articles on the role of prose structure in reading comprehension. Drs. Haring, Brandt, and Walker are recent graduates of the doctoral program at Arizona State University and have published several articles in psychological journals.