integrating different types of information into hydrological model parameter estimation: application...

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JOURNAL OF VERBAL LEARNING AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR 19, 263--275 (1980) Integrating Different Types of Information in Text CAROL H. WALKER Military Personnel Center AND BONNIE J. F. MEYER Arizona State University This investigation was designed to answer two major questions: (a) does height of infor- mation in the content structure of text affect the probability of integrating the information, and (b) is it possible to differentiate between integration that occurs during acquisition and integration that takes place at retrieval. Results of an inference verification task suggested that information high in the structure is more likely to be integrated than information low in the structure. These effects were observed in two instruction groups (learn and read) and in two presentation modes (separate and consecutive). In addition, premises occurring to- gether in the text (consecutive presentation) were found to promote faster correct decisions than premises occurring separately. These verification time results were interpreted as evidence that structural integration (i.e., integration at acquisition) is more likely when premises occur together in an information source than when they occur separately. Within a passage of text, some of the re- lationships among ideas and sets of ideas are stated explicitly. Other relationships are only implied and thus must be derived or inferred by the reader. This inferential pro- cess is continuous and often automatic during reading, as the reader attempts to integrate the separate but related facts presented in the text into a meaningful con- ceptual whole. While certain inferential re- lationships are detected during reading, it is not necessary to integrate all possible pairs of related facts in order to understand a text. A primary purpose of the present study was to test for an effect of height in the content structure on the probability of integrating two related facts. Additionally, an attempt is made to distinguish between This research was supported in part by an Arizona State University Faculty Grant. This paper is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted by the first author to Arizona State University. The authors wish to thank Rick Yekovich for critical comments on an earlier ver- sion of the manuscript. We also extend special thanks to Barbara Hayes-Roth who created the original pas- sages. Send reprint requests to: Carol H. Walker, 4000 Westgate Drive, Alexandria, Va. 22309. 263 situations where integration occurred at ac- quisition (also known as structural integra- tion) and situations where integration oc- curred at retrieval. The topic of structural integration in memory has been the focus of a number of recent papers (Bransford & Franks, 1971; Carpenter & Just, 1977; Hayes-Roth & Thorndyke, 1979; Hayes-Roth & Walker, 1979; Kintsch, 1974, Chap. 8; Walker & Meyer, in press; Yekovich & Walker, 1978). Bransford and Franks (1971) demon- strated that subjects spontaneously inte- grated the information contained in a series of semantically related ideas and stored this information as a structurally integrated memory representation. Kintsch (1974, Chap. 8) reported similar findings. He studied the processing of implicit proposi- tions, and found that subjects could accu- rately recognize test sentences as true even when the information in the sentences had not been stated explicitly in the text. He concluded that whether or not critical sen- tences were explicitly given in a paragraph, the reader inferred the corresponding prop- osition and stored it in memory as part of 0022-5371/80/030263-13502.00/0 Copyright© 1980 by AcademicPress, Inc. All rights nf reproduction in any form reserved.

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JOURNAL OF VERBAL LEARNING AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR 19, 263--275 (1980)

Integrating Different Types of Information in Text

CAROL H. W A L K E R

Military Personnel Center

A N D

BONNIE J. F. MEYER

Arizona State University

This investigation was designed to answer two major questions: (a) does height of infor- mation in the content s t ructure of text affect the probability of integrating the information, and (b) is it possible to differentiate be tween integration that occurs during acquisit ion and integration that takes place at retrieval. Resul ts of an inference verification task suggested that information high in the s t ructure is more likely to be integrated than information low in the s tructure. These effects were observed in two instruct ion groups (learn and read) and in two presenta t ion modes (separate and consecut ive) . In addition, premises occurring to- gether in the text (consecut ive presentat ion) were found to promote faster correct decisions than premises occurring separately. These verification time resul ts were interpreted as evidence that s tructural integration (i.e., integration at acquisition) is more likely when premises occur together in an information source than when they occur separately.

Within a passage of text, some of the re- lationships among ideas and sets of ideas are stated explicitly. Other relationships are only implied and thus must be derived or inferred by the reader. This inferential pro- cess is continuous and often automatic during reading, as the reader attempts to integrate the separate but related facts presented in the text into a meaningful con- ceptual whole. While certain inferential re- lationships are detected during reading, it is not necessary to integrate all possible pairs of related facts in order to understand a text. A primary purpose of the present study was to test for an effect of height in the content structure on the probability of integrating two related facts. Additionally, an attempt is made to distinguish between

This research was suppor ted in part by an Arizona State Univers i ty Facul ty Grant . This paper is based on a doctoral dissertat ion submit ted by the first au thor to Arizona State Univers i ty . The au thors wish to thank Rick Yekovich for critical commen t s on an earlier ver- sion o f the manuscr ipt . We also ex tend special thanks to Barbara Hayes -Roth who created the original pas- sages. Send reprint reques ts to: Carol H. Walker, 4000 Westga te Drive, Alexandria, Va. 22309.

263

situations where integration occurred at ac- quisition (also known as structural integra- tion) and situations where integration oc- curred at retrieval.

The topic of structural integration in memory has been the focus of a number of recent papers (Bransford & Franks, 1971; Carpenter & Just, 1977; Hayes-Roth & Thorndyke, 1979; Hayes-Roth & Walker, 1979; Kintsch, 1974, Chap. 8; Walker & Meyer, in press; Yekovich & Walker, 1978). Bransford and Franks (1971) demon- strated that subjects spontaneously inte- grated the information contained in a series of semantically related ideas and stored this information as a structurally integrated memory representation. Kintsch (1974, Chap. 8) reported similar findings. He studied the processing of implicit proposi- tions, and found that subjects could accu- rately recognize test sentences as true even when the information in the sentences had not been stated explicitly in the text. He concluded that whether or not critical sen- tences were explicitly given in a paragraph, the reader inferred the corresponding prop- osition and stored it in memory as part of

0022-5371/80/030263-13502.00/0 Copyright © 1980 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights nf reproduction in any form reserved.

264 W A L K E R A N D MEYER

the text base that was his memory for the meaning of the paragraph.

Hayes-Roth and Thorndyke (1979) in- vestigated the conditions under which inte- gration was likely to occur. Using pairs of facts where each fact expressed part of the information in a complex idea, Hayes-Roth and Thorndyke identified two factors that differentially affected the likelihood of forming an integrated memory representa- tion: (a) the degree of correspondence in the wording of common information in the related facts, and (b) whether or not the re- lated facts occurred consecutively in a pas- sage of text. Based on their findings that identical wording and consecutive presen- tation of related facts facilitated integration, they concluded that lexical units (rather than propositions) form the basis for repre- senting facts in memory.

The probability of processing implicit propositions does not depend solely on the learner's ability to integrate. As Hayes- Roth and Thorndyke (1979) noted, errors on an inferential reasoning test can be pro- duced either by failure to integrate related facts or by memory failure for the indi- vidual facts themselves. Consequently, test performance in their study was consid- erably lower than 100%. Hayes-Roth and Walker (1979) designed a subsequent ex- periment to study configural effects in memory. In the Hayes-Roth and Walker study, subjects were encouraged to read the passages slowly, carefully, and as many times as they needed to, in order to learn the information. In addition, subjects were urged to pay close attention to details and were given a test over the factual informa- tion in the texts. As might be expected, these special instructions improved sub- jec ts ' memory for individual facts. Of greater interest was the finding that these subjects spontaneously integrated a high percentage of the related propositions con- tained in the texts, even though the facts within each pair were only tangentially re- lated to one another. This tendency to inte- grate enabled the subjects to correctly ver- ify almost twice as many inferences as

compared to a condition in which they didn't learn the texts beforehand but had access to them during the verification task (Hayes-Roth & Walker, 1979).

This finding that an appropriate configu- ration of relevant facts in memory facili- tates integration suggests a relationship between the content structure of text and the probability of integrating textual infor- mation. Meyer (1975) has defined the con- tent structure of a passage as the hierarchi- cally arranged semantic grammar of the propositions or ideas contained in the pas- sage and the relationships among these ideas. She demonstrated that ideas high in the structure are better remembered after reading or listening to a passage than ideas low in the structure (see also Kintsch, Kozminsky, Streby, McKoon, & Keenan, 1975; Meyer & McConkie, 1973). If promi- nent ideas in the content structure of an in- formation source are better remembered, it would follow that the related information common to these prominent ideas should have a correspondingly higher probability of successful integration (see Goetz, 1979). That is, since ideas or facts that are high in the content structure are more accessible, they should also be more susceptible to si- multaneous activation (and integration) than ideas low in the structure. One pur- pose of the present experiment was to test this hypothesis.

At this point, an important distinction should be made. While structural integra- tion (i.e., the integration process that oc- curs during acquisition, resulting in an inte- grated memory representation) is of pri- mary importance in this paper, it does not preclude the possibility that separately stored facts may be integrated at time of retrieval. While at least one previolas study dealing with integration has acknowledged this possibility (Hayes-Roth & Thorndyke, 1979), most theories have assumed integra- tion to be strictly a structural phenomenon. In the current context, however, integra- tion at retrieval is a reasonable possibility. As Kintsch (1974, Chap. 8) has argued, a reader is motivated to process an implicit

INTEGRATING INFORMATION IN TEXT 265

proposition (i.e., integrate) if the processing of subsequent propositions depends on the implicit proposition. In Kintsch's study the propositions were successively presented components of complex ideas. There are cases, however, when two integratable facts are separated such that there is little motivation for spontaneous integration. For instance, two propositions that occur low in the content structures of separate informa- tion sources should be less susceptible to structural integration because comprehen- sion of the latter proposition is probably not predicated on integrating it with the former proposition. In other words, recognizing that a relationship exists between two de- tails in separate episodes would be less critical to comprehension than integrating consecutively presented main ideas.

In the following experiment subjects read passages and were tested on their ability to integrate related facts. It was predicted that the probability of integrating facts that oc- curred high in the content structure of the passages would be greater than the proba- bility of integrating facts that occurred low in the structure. To distinguish between situations where integration occurred at ac- quisition and situations where integration occurred at retrieval, two additional factors were manipulated. Inferential premises were either separated or occurred consecu- tively in the texts. Subjects were instructed either to read the passage once or to learn the information in the passage as com- pletely as possible. In addition to accuracy on the inference verification test, verifica- tion times were also recorded. It was as- sumed that verification of inferences based on premises integrated at acquisition would be faster than verification of inferences based on premises that were retrieved sepa- rately and integrated at the time of the test.

METHOD

Materials and Design

Two sets of stories were used in the pres- ent experiment. The stories described vari- ous aspects of life in the mythical country of Morinthia, and were adapted from mate-

rials previously used by Hayes-Roth and Thorndyke (1979) and Hayes-Roth and Walker (1979). The topics of the two sets of stories were: (1) Revolution in Morinthia and (2) Religious customs and beliefs in Morinthia. A distinctive feature of these stories is that embedded within each set are four pairs of integratable facts; these pairs of facts may be used as premises to justify conclusions that are inferable from the text but are never stated explicitly. Two ver- sions of each story set were constructed for the present experiment in order to conform to the experimental manipulations de- scribed in the following paragraph.

The experimental manipulations in the current study included: two levels of IN- STRUCTION (read versus learn), two levels of mode of PRESENTATION (sepa- rate versus consecutive), and two levels of HEIGHT of integratable information in the content structure (high versus low). The design was thus a 2 x 2 x 2 fac- torial design with repeated measures on the last two factors.

Of the three factors in the experiment, only mode of presentation involved manip- ulation of materials. The common infor- mation in the integratable premises was either separate (integratable premises were presented on separate pages) or consecu- tive (premises occurred together in the text). The original sets of stories used b y Hayes-Roth and Walker (1979) were con- structed as pairs of passages (separate pre- sentation); therefore, integrated versions where the premises occurred consecutively were constructed for the present investiga- tion. In the following example from the Revolution set, integratable premises are separated by intervening text. Note that the related information is italicized and corre- sponding premises are identified by number and superscript.

(1) The Spring Episode was the first revolution in Morinthia. It occurred shortly before dawn on April 17, 1843. The revolution was undoubtedly caused by the tyranny imposed upon the Morin- thian people by (2) King Egbert, the dictator. For months, Egbert had extracted half of all the

266 WALKER AND MEYER

earnings of the people. However, the immediate cause of the outbreak appeared to be a minor crime committed several days earlier. A peasant had poached several chickens from the royal henhouse to serve at his daughter's wedding. It seemed a minor offense to the people, but (3) in Morinthia, everyone who disobeyed the law was punished severely. The peasant was seized by the royal guards and thrown into prison. (4) The Morinthian prison was populated exclusively by the king's enemies. The townspeople were thrown into a frenzy at the severity of the sen- tence. Even those who swore loyalty to Egbert joined the crowds demanding freedom for the peasant. The crowds stormed the palace. An ef- figy of the king was burned. Egbert commanded them to respect his authority and disperse at once.

The Curfew Episode was the second attemp- ted revolution in Morinthia. (1') All Morinthian revolutions were failures. The outbreak occurred on March 27, 1844, because (3') some youths disobeyed the curfew law. The law had been a source of friction between the townspeople and the government for some time. The people wel- comed the opportunity to flood the streets, throwing stones and damaging property. Albert Profiro, a young Morinthian tradesman, took it upon himself t o try and calm the people. Al- though (2') Albert hated all dictators and their governments, he hated anarchy in the streets even more. So he positioned himself on a plat- form in the center of the town square and called upon the people to return to their homes. Un- fortunately, when the royal soldiers arrived, they only saw a young man shouting to the crowd, and assumed he was responsible for the riot. Albert was arrested and thrown into prison. Although Albert spent 3 bitter years in prison, his experi- ence brought some good with it as well. (4 ' ) / t was in prison that Albert met Anastacia De Ville, whom he subsequently married.

Note that premises (1) and (1') can be com- bined to justify the conclusion "The Spring Episode was a failure"; (2) and (2') can be combined to justify "Albert Profiro hated King Egbert"; (3) and (3') allow one to infer correctly that "The youths who disobeyed the curfew law were punished severely"; and, the combination of (4) and (4') vali- dates the conclusion that "Anastacia De- Ville was an enemy of the king." The con- secutive version of the Revolution set is presented in the appendix.

To determine the height of the inferential premises in the content s t ructure , the

stories were segmented into linguistic sub- units and analyzed according to the method of prose analysis developed by Meyer (1975). Pairs of integratable premises were classified as either high, located in the top half of a passage's content structure, or low, located in the bottom half of this hier- archical structure (see Table 1). The pas- sages were constructed to insure that an equal number of the pairs of premises oc- curred high and low in the content structure of each version of each story. Finally, the number of words in each story was deter- mined and adjustments were made to ap- proximately equate the passages in length (mean length = 392 words, SD = 25.8).

Both instruction conditions (read and learn) received identical sets of materials. Each subject saw one version of each story set. Order of presentation was counter- balanced using one Latin square. Height of integratable premises in the content struc- ture was controlled across both versions of both stories.

Dependent measures were (a) accuracy on a verification task; (b) decision time on the verification task; and (c) free recall. Precise definitions and details of these de- pendent variables are presented in the pro- cedure section.

Subjects

Thirty-two Arizona State University stu- dents participated as subjects in the 2-hour exper iment . Students were ei ther paid ($2.00 per hour) or offered course credit in return for their participation.

Procedure

Subjects were tested individually. Each subject was given general instructions, practice materials, instructions on the ver- ification task, instructions specific to either the " read" or " learn" instruction condi- tion, experimental texts, verification items, blank pages for free recall, and a final test of the inferences in syllogism form.

General instructions. Subjects were ad- vised that this was an experiment on story memory. They were informed that ques-

I N T E G R A T I N G I N F O R M A T I O N IN TEXT

T A B L E 1 ATTRIBUTES OF PASSAGES USED IN THE EXPERIMENT

267

Attr ibute

Passage

Revolut ion Religion

N u m b e r o f idea units in each passage ' s content s t ructure

Total levels in the content s t ructure of the passages

Levels classified as high in the content s tructure

Levels classified as low in the content s t ructure

N u m b e r o f high-level idea units N u m b e r o f low-level idea units

130 160

6 9

1 - 3 1 - 5

4 - 6 6 - 9

44 71 86 89

tions in the form of statements would be presented following each story (or pair of stories in the segregated presentation con- dition). They were to decide if the state- ments were true or false, based on the in- formation in the stories. Sometimes the in- formation needed to make these t r ue - f a l s e dec i s i ons was exp l i c i t l y s t a t ed in the stories; other times the truth or falsity of the statements could be deduced from the stories. Subjects were encouraged to ask ques t i ons w h e n e v e r t hey we re u n s u r e about any aspect of the task or the proce- dure. They were advised that additional in- structions would be provided when neces- sary throughout the duration of the experi- ment. When the exper imenter was satisfied that a subject unders tood the basic purpose and procedure of the study, a practice set of materials was presented.

Practice stories. The primary purpose of the practice exercise was to familiarize the sub jec t wi th the task , p r o c e d u r e , and equipment. Subjects were advised to read the stories through once, slowly and care- fully. Fol lowing the p resen ta t ion of the practice stories, detailed instructions on the verification task were presented.

Instructions for the verification task. In- structions for the verif icat ion task were detailed and specific. Subjects were told that their primary task was to decide if test sentences were true or false. They were reminded that a sentence could be true be-

cause it was explicitly stated in the text or because it could be proved true by com- bining pieces of related information avail- able in the text.

Subjects were advised to tell the experi- menter when they arr ived at a decision by saying " t r u e " or " f a l s e " as soon as they decided. They were to indicate how they arrived at their decisions by "thinking out loud" in order to produce justification for their decisions.

Read versus learn instructions. Follow- ing the p rac t ice sess ion, subjects were given instructions pertaining to the two sets of experimental texts. Read versus learn was a between subject factor with 16 sub- jec ts randomly assigned to each group. Subjects in the read condition were told to read the material through once at their normal reading speed. Subjects in the learn condi t ion were ins t ruc ted to read each story carefully, as many times as needed, in order to learn the information. They were urged to pay close attention to detail and to try and remember as much as possible. In addition, the exper imenter suggested to the learn subjects that they underline important points in the text, to help them remember.

Verification task. Af te r r e a d i n g (or learning) the first experimental text, sub- jects were given a verification test. Four types of statements were used on the verifi- cation tests: (a) true statements that were explicitly stated in the text; (b) false state-

268 WALKER AND MEYER

ments that could be refuted by information explicitly stated in the text; (c) true state- ments that were not explicitly stated but could be proved true by combining pieces of related information from the text (as il- lustrated in the examples in the materials section); and (d) false statements that were not necessarily true given the information in the texts. Since better performance was expected when inferential premises oc- curred high in the content structure, ex- plicit statements were included on the ver- ification task to determine whether high- low differences were due to memory fail- ure or failure to integrate. There were two true statements explicit from the text, two false explicit statements, four true infer- ences, and four false inferences, ordered randomly, on the test following each pre- sentation of topically related material.

All subjects were urged to produce a cont inuous verbal descr ip t ion of their thoughts while performing the verification task. These descript ions were tape re- corded and subsequently transcribed. The verification time for each t rue-fa lse judg- ment was measured by a Hunter Kloc- kounter and recorded in each instance by the experimenter. The measured interval began as soon as the subject started to read the inference out loud. A voice relay at- tached to the timer picked up the sound of the subject's voice, activating the timing device. The timed interval stopped when the subject made a decision. The time that elapsed while the subject read the to-be- verified inference out loud was included in the timed interval because presumably pro- cessing was going on during this time. In- ferences based on premises high and low in the structure were matched for number of words so that reading times would be com- parable in the two conditions. True explicit statements high and low in the structure and false explicit statements high and low in the structure were also equated for length. Since there were no premises to support false inferences, the classification of these inferences based on height in the content

structure was not possible. This r e a d - verify (or l e a r n - v e r i f y ) procedure was repeated with the second experimental text for each subject.

Free recall. After subjects were tested on both topics, they were asked to recall the two stories in the order of original presen- tation. These free recall tests were in writ- ten form and were self-paced.

Syllogism test. Finally, each subject was given a written test of 16 inferences in syl- logism form. On this test, each inference was immediately preceded by a pair of premises. True inferences were preceded by the two facts from the text necessary to justify the inference. False inferences were preceded by facts that were related to the inference but did not necessarily prove it to be true. Subjects recorded their t rue-fa lse judgments on IBM answer sheets. Analyses of verification items were conditional on correct syllogism responses. The order of presentation was randomized.

RESULTS

The data were first analyzed using a three-factor multivariate analysis of vari- ance. The three factors were height of the integratable premises in the content struc- ture (high vs. low), presentation mode of the integratable premises (separate vs. con- secutive), and type of instructions (read vs. learn). Both height in the content structure and mode of presentation were repeated measures. The three dependent measures were accuracy in verifying true inferences, verification time to verify true inferences, and proportion of idea units recalled on the free recall task. Of the four types of items on the verification test (true explicit state- ments, false explicit statements, true infer- ences, and false inferences), true inferences were selected as the critical item because correct verification of a true inference is evidence of both retrieval success and inte- gration. Verifying or refuting an explicit statement tests only recognition, not inte- gration. False inferences are not supported by premises from the text; therefore, they

I N T E G R A T I N G I N F O R M A T I O N IN T E X T 269

cannot be classified according to height in the s t ructure . Mean accu racy scores on true inferences, verification t imes of cor- rect true inferences and proport ions of idea units recal led are p re sen ted in Table 2. Overall mult ivariate F ratios were signifi- cant for all three main effects. The learn group outper formed the read group, mul- t ivariate F(3,28) = 12.83, p < .0001. Con- secutive presentat ions were preferable to separa te presenta t ions , mul t ivar ia te F(3, 28) = 4.11 p < .01. Informat ion high in the structure was more facilitative than infor- mation low in the s t ructure, mult ivariate F(3, 28) = 27.98, p < .0001. Additionally, the interaction be tween type of instructions and presentat ion mode was reliable, mul- t ivariate F(3, 28) = 3.22, p < .03. Based on the significant results of these mult ivariate tests, individual univariate tests will also be reported. Tests of verification accuracy and verification t ime are presented in the next section. Results of the free recall task are presented separate ly in a subsequent sec- tion.

Verification Results Verification accuracy. The ef fec ts o f

type of instructions and height of informa- tion in the content s tructure on verification accuracy of true inferences were reliable, F(1, 30) = 8.95, p < .005 and F(1, 30) = 8.36, p < .007. True inferences were ver- ified more accurate ly by the learn group than the read group; true inferences based on premises high in the content structure were verified more accurate ly than true in- f e r ences b a s e d on p r e m i s e s low in the structure.

The co r rec t ly ver i f ied t rue inferences were classified to determine the basis for the t rue dec is ion . T h r e e c lass i f i ca t ions were defined: (a) cor rec t ly just i f ied true inferences, (b) assert ions, and (c) other jus- tifications. To correct ly just ify a true infer- ence, it was necessary for a subject to pro- duce the two premises f rom the text that irrefutably p roved the inference to be true. For example , product ion of

"Wel l , it said King Egbert was a dictator and Albert Profiro hated all dictators and their gov- e rnments , so tha t ' s t rue . "

was scored as a correct justif ication for the true inference "Albe r t Profiro hated King Egber t . " I f the subject claimed that a true inference had been explicitly stated in the text, for example ,

" Y e s , t ha t ' s true, it said tha t Albert hated King Egber t . "

then the correct verification was scored as an assertion. The third classification, other justifications, included responses based on contextual cues, world knowledge, or per- sonal bias. For example , the response

"Wel l , I guess Albert hated the king. I mean the king th rew him in jail w h e n he w a s n ' t even guilty. And if someone threw me in jail for a cr ime I d idn ' t commit , I 'd hate him. So tha t ' s probably t rue . "

was scored as an " o t h e r just i f icat ion." Of the 256 true inferences, 223 were correct ly verified. Of these 223 correct verifications, 145 were appropr ia te ly justified, 51 were assert ions, and 27 received some other type of support .

A three-factor analysis of the justified trues again revealed a superiori ty for learn (.~ = 1.406) over read (Y~ = .859), F(1, 30) = 16.96, p < .001, and an effect for height in the content structure (high = 1.437, low = .828), F(1, 30) = 40.23, p < .001. Mode of presentat ion was not significant. Thus, not only were inferences based on high prem- ises more likely to be correct ly verified, they also were more likely to be appropri- ately justified. And regardless of the height o f integratable p remises , subjects in the learn group justified more true inferences than subjects in the read group.

Only 51 responses were classified as as- sertions. There were five subjects who pro- duced no responses in this category. When the degrees of f reedom were adjusted ac- cordingly, a three-factor analysis of vari- ance on assert ions yielded a significant ef- fect only on the presentat ion mode factor, F(1, 25) = 7.157, p < .025. Subjects were

270 W A L K E R A N D M E Y E R

more than twice as likely to claim that in- ferences based on consecu t ive premises had been explicitly stated than inferences based on separate premises (means = .546 and .250, respectively). Type of instruc- tions and height in the structure were not s ignif icant in this analys is . The 27 re- sponses classified as "o the r just if ications" were not analyzed due to their low fre- quency of occurrence.

Correct responses to other types of items on the verification test were also scored. The explicitly stated items were correct ly verified in 244 out of 256 cases (95.3% cor- rect recognition). Of the 12 errors commit- ted, 5 were in response to true items and 7 in response to false explicit items. Because of this ceiling effect on immediate recogni- tion of explicitly presented information, no further analyses were performed on these data.

In summary, while both the learn and read groups were equally adept at recog- nizing explicit statements from the text, the learn group displayed a marked superiority in (a) verifying inferences, (b) verifying true inferences, and (c) producing the appropri- ate justifications to support their correct decisions. True inferences based on prem- ises high in the structure were more likely to be correct ly verified as true and more likely to be appropriately justified by both ins t ruct ion groups. Asser t ions based on consecutive premises were more than twice as frequent as assertions based on separate premises.

Verification times. In contrast to the pre- vious section on verification accuracy, a three-factor analysis of variance on verifi- cation times for true inferences produced different results. While the main effects for type of instructions and height of informa- tion in the content structure failed to reach significance, the main effect for presenta- t ion mode and the in te rac t ion be tween mode of presentation and type of instruc- tions were both highly reliable, F(1, 30) = 11.09, p < .002, and F(1, 30) = 7.30, p < .01. That is, learn and read groups did not

differ significantly in the amount of time re- quired to verify a true inference. Neither was there a ver i f icat ion t ime dif ference between inferences based on premises high and low in the structure. However , infer- ences based on premises that occurred to- gether in the text were verified faster than inferences based on premises that occurred separately, and this difference w a s reliably larger in the learn group than in the read group (see Table 2).

Verification times were also analyzed for the justified trues. For eight of the 128 ob- servations (6.25%), subjects failed to justify any true inferences. Cell means were sub- stituted in these cases. Of the three factors in the analysis, only presentation mode af- fected verification time of justified trues, F(1, 30) = 25.94, p < .001. As was the case with correct (but not necessarily justified) true inferences, verification times were faster for justified true inferences based on prem- ises that occurred together in the text. Jus- tified trues based on premises that occurred separately were verif ied accurate ly , but verification times were slower.

In summary, degree of proximity of infer- ential premises within the tex t was the most significant factor in the verification time data. While height of premises in the s t ruc ture and type of ins t ruc t ions were powerful determiners of verification accu- racy, only presentat ion mode and the in- t e rac t ion be tween ins t ruc t ion type and mode proved reliable as predictors of ver- ification time.

Results of Free Recall Analyses Free recall was the third variable in the

r e s p o n s e v e c t o r a n a l y z e d in the mul- tivariate analysis. Since the total number of idea units differed between the two pas- sages (see Table 1), proportion of idea units recal led was the dependen t measure of in te res t . In the t h r e e - f a c t o r un iva r i a t e analysis, both the type of instructions and height main effects were highly reliable, F(1, 30) = 34.54, p < .001 and F(1, 30) = 45.96, p < .001 (see Table 2). The learn

INTEGRATING INFORMATION IN TEXT

TABLE 2 CELL MEANS FOR CORRECT VERIFICATIONS OF TRUE INFERENCES, VERIFICATION TIMES FOR

TRUE INFERENCES, AND PROPORTION OF IDEA UNITS RECALLED

271

Integrated Segregated

High Low High Low

Learn

Read

Correct verifications a 2.000 1.812 1.812 1.750 (1.843) Verification time b 4.977 6.128 8.300 10.944 (7.596) Proportion of idea .798 .642 .864 .734 (.759)

traits recalled Correct verifications ~ 1.750 1.500 1.812 1.500 (1.640) Verification time b 6.762 6.793 7.171 7.233 (6.999) Proportion of idea .630 .480 .563 .525 (.550)

units recalled (1.875) (1.656) (1.812) (1.625) (5.870) (6.460) (7.736) (9.106) (.714) (.561) (.713) (.629)

Note. Row means and column means are presented in parentheses. These data represent only those test inferences to which subjects responded correctly on the final syllogism

test. Accuracy on the syllogisms was over 99% and did not differ among conditions. Verification times are expressed in seconds.

group recalled 75.9% of the information contained in the text, indicating that they had formed relatively complete memory representations of the presented material. The read group recalled 55.0% of the infor- mation. Both groups recalled more high idea units than low idea units (means = 71.4 and 59.5%, respectively).

Two further observations are relevant in the present context. First, there were very few position intrusions in the recall pro- tocols. Even when a pair of premises had been integrated to justify a true inference, the premises were most often recalled in the positions they occupied in the presented texts. Of the 338 inferential premises pro- duced on the free recall protocols, only 10 switched mode of presentation (2.9%). Of these 10, 8 had been segregated at presen- tation and were integrated by the subject in the recall protocol. The remaining two had occurred together in the text but were sep- arated by the subject during recall.

Second, a count was made of the number of times a subject failed to justify a true inference but subsequently succeeded at producing both premises at free recall. Since both premises were accessible in memory at retrieval, this measure was as-

sumed to be relatively pure measure of in- tegration failure. The probability of not jus- tifying a true inference given recall of both premises was. 19. In 24 of the 125 instances where both premises were produced at free recall, subjects failed to correctly justify the corresponding true inference on the verifi- cation test. Due to the relatively small number of observations in this category, further analyses were not attempted. How- ever, it is worth noting that 17/24 observa- tions were low in the content structure and 14/24 occurred in the segregated presenta- tion condition.

Thus the major free recall results were consistent with the results of the verifica- tion task. Both text structure and instruc- tions to learn affected performance. High information was recalled more often than low information, and increased processing produced superior overall recall.

DISCUSSION

The data from this investigation were analyzed to answer two main questions: (a) does the height of information in the con- tent structure of text affect the probability of integrating the information, and (b) is it possible to differentiate between integra-

272 WALKER AND MEYER

tion that occurs during acquisition and inte- gration that takes place at retrieval. Results bearing on each of these questions will be discussed separately.

Effects of Height of Information in the Content Structure The results obtained in this study suggest

that height of information in the content structure of text is an important factor in integration. True inferences based on premises high in the structure were more likely to be correctly judged as true and more likely to be appropriately justified than true inferences based on premises low in the structure. These effects were ob- served in both instruction groups (learn and read) and in both presentation modes (sepa- rate and consecutive). High-level infer- ences were appropriately justified 71.8% of the time, while low-level inferences were correctly justified in only 41.4% of the re- sponses. An additional 16.4% of the high- level inferences were falsely recognized as statements explicit from the text. Since re- sponses of this type (assertions) indicated recognition of the truth value of an infer- ence (e.g., that "Anastacia DeVille was an enemy of the king"), these assertions were also evidence of integration (Bransford & Franks, 1971). Among the low-level infer- ences, 23.4% were asserted to be state- ments explicit from the text. Thus overall 88.2% of the high-level premises were inte- grated as opposed to 64.8% of the low-level premises.

In addition to these quantitative differ- ences in integrated memory representations based on premises high and low in the con- tent structure, the justified true responses also provided evidence of qualitative differ- ences between the two groups of responses. Correctly verified high-level inferences were more likely to be appropriately jus- tified, indicating recognition of the truth value of the statement and ability to recall the specific supporting evidence from the text. Correctly verified low-level infer- ences, on the other hand, were more likely

to be falsely recognized as statements ex- plicit from the text. Thus, while the gist of the low-level information was often re- tained, the specific wording was likely to be forgotten.

Subjects' inability to remember the spe- cific wording of the low-level premises was a probable cause of their failure to verify low-level inferences. Hayes-Roth and Thorndyke (1979) showed that identical wording of common information facilitated integration of two related facts. If subjects in the present experiment were unable to remember the specific wording of low-level premises, it follows that they were less likely to detect a relationship between these premises, either at acquisition or retrieval. Recognition rates for the high and low ex- plicit statements support this claim of inte- gration failure. If integration had been equally likely with high and low premises, then the ability to recognize the truth value of high and low inferences would have been comparable to the subjects' ability to accu- rately recognize high and low true explicit statements. This was not the case. In the present investigation, no differences were observed between recognition rates for high and low explicit statements. True explicit statements were verified and false explicit statements were refuted accurately and quickly, regardless of their level in the hier- archy. Similar results have been reported by other authors (e.g., McKoon, 1977; Miller , Per ry , & Cunn ingham, 1977; Thorndyke & Yekovich, in press). In the Miller et al. paper, the difference between mean proportions for superordinate (.5773) and subordinate (.6296) items correctly recognized on an immediate test failed to reach significance, dependent t (21) = -1.52. McKoon (1977) reported that sen- tences containing topic information were recognized faster and more accurately than sentences containing details, but only after a 25-minute delay. When testing was imme- diate, the differences were not significant. In contrast, significant differences were ob- served in the present experiment between

I N T E G R A T I N G I N F O R M A T I O N IN T E X T 273

subjects' abilities to verify high and low im- plicit statements. Since their ability to rec- ognize the truth value of low-level informa- tion was not impaired, subjects' inferior performance on the verification of low-level inferences was probably due to memory failure for specific wording of low-level in- formation and consequent failure to inte- grate.

Integration at Acquisition versus Integration at Retrieval

The verification accuracy data provided evidence that learners can successfully in- tegrate related facts to acquire information which is only implicit in a text. In addition, both the data from the justified true re- sponses and the free recall protocols indi- cated that subjects often could distinguish this implicit information from propositions explicitly stated in the passage. Up to this point, however, no distinction has been made between structural integration (inte- gration that occurs at acquisition resulting in a structurally integrated memory repre- sentation) and integration that occurs at re- trieval as a result of a retrieval cue. In this section, an attempt will be made to differ- entiate between structural integration and integration at retrieval.

Presumably, if two premises are inte- grated at acquisition, the implicit proposi- tion that results from this integrative pro- cess is stored together with the premises. That is, if a reader encounters

(1) The outbreak occurred because some youths disobeyed the curfew law.

(2) In Morinthia, everyone who dis- obeyed the law was punished se- verely.

in a text and spontaneously integrates these two facts, then the resulting implicit propo- sition

(3) The youths who disobeyed the cur- few law were punished severely.

would be stored together with (1) and (2). If this is true, then the presentation of(3) on a verification test would require only that the reader recognize an already stored propo-

sition. This recognition task would be sim- pler than the process of simultaneously ac- tivating two separately stored propositions in order to verify an inference at retrieval. This simplified retrieval process (i.e., rec- ognition) should result in correspondingly faster verification times for structurally in- tegrated premises. Premises stored sepa- rately may be accessible at retrieval, re- sulting in an accurate verification, but the time to accomplish verification in this case would be slower.

Data from the present experiment indi- cate that premises presented together in the text (consecutive presentation) are more likely to be structurally integrated than premises presented separately, and that this tendency is magnified in the learn condi- tion. While mode of presentation produced no significant differences in verification ac- curacy, inferences based on premises that occurred together in the text were verified significantly faster than inferences based on premises that were presented separately. In fact, the time to verify true inferences based on consecutively presented premises (,~ = 6.1635 seconds) was almost identical to the time required to recognize true ex- plicit statements (X = 6.1916 seconds), while the verification time for inferences based on separate premises was reliably slower (X = 8.4213 seconds).

Additional support for the contention that premises appearing together in the text are more likely to be structurally integrated than premises separated by intervening material comes from the assertion data. As- sertions (claims that inferences based on the text were explicitly stated) were more than twice as likely in the consecutive pre- sentation condition, indicating that prem- ises appearing together were most likely to result in structurally integrated memory representations.

In summary, learners appear to be rela- tively adept at recognizing explicitly pre- sented textual information immediately after presentation. However, if learners are re- quired to make judgments or decisions

274 WALKER AND MEYER

based on information from several sources, then information high in the structure and r e l a t i v e l y c o m p l e t e m e m o r y repre- sentations appear to be facilitative. Fur- thermore, while accurate decisions can be made regardless of whether premises occur together or separately in the text, consecu- tively presented facts promote faster deci- sions.

APPENDIX

(1') All Morinthian revolutions were fail- ures. (1) The Spring Episode was the first revolution in Morinthia. It occurred shortly before dawn on April 17, 1843. The revolu- t ion was u n d o u b t e d l y caused by the tyranny imposed upon the Morinthian people by King Egbert. However, the im- mediate cause of the outbreak appeared to be a minor crime committed several days earlier. A peasant had poached several chickens from the royal henhouse to serve at his daughter's wedding. The peasant was seized by the royal guards and thrown into prison. The townspeople were thrown into a frenzy at the severity of the sentence. Even those who swore loyalty to Egbert joined the crowds demanding freedom for the peasant . The crowds stormed the palace. An effigy of the king was burned. Egbert commanded them to respect his authority and disperse at once.

The Curfew Episode was the second at- tempted revolution in Morinthia. This out- break occurred on March 27, 1844, because (3') some youths disobeyed the curfew law. It seemed a minor offense to the people, (3) but in Morinthia, everyone who disobeyed the law was punished severely. The law had been a source of friction between the townspeople and the government for some time. The people welcomed the opportunity to flood the streets, throwing stones and damaging property. For months, (2) Egbert, the dictator, had extracted half of all the earnings of the people. (2') Albert Profiro, a young Morinthian tradesman, hated all dictators and their governments. But he

hated anarchy in the streets even more. So he took it upon himself to try and calm the people. He positioned himself on a platform in the center of the town square and called upon the people to return to their homes. Unfortunately, when the royal soldiers ar- rived, they only saw a young man shouting to the crowd, and assumed he was respon- sible for the riot. Albert was arrested and thrown into prison. (4) The Morinthian prison was populated exclusively by the king's enemies. (4') It was in prison that Albert met Anastacia DeVille, whom he subsequently married. Thus, although Al- bert spent 3 bitter years in prison, his expe- rience brought some good with it as well.

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(Received November 12, 1979)