reporting and vague instructions to participants. Jennifer and Michael Cole discuss the application ofBartlett’s theory of conventionalization to an anthropological study of the colonial transformation ofa group of peasant farmers in East Madagascar and describe the usefulness of this theory inunderstanding how these people remember their pre-colonized past in their daily lives. Akiko Saito’schapter examines the different levels of explanation inherent in Bartlett’s theories and focuses on thetheory of conventionalization with reference to a cultural psychological study of the transmission ofZen into Britain from Japan. Mary Douglas discusses the difficulties of developing a cultural theoryof behaviour and cognition whilst, in the final chapter, David Bloor discusses how the mainingredients of the modern sociology of scientific knowledge can all be found in Bartlett’s work. Thefinal section of the book presents the most complete bibliography of Bartlett’s work, complied by hisson Hugh.

In their entirety, these chapters demonstrate the continuing relevance and contemporary devel-opment of Bartlett’s better-known and accepted ideas. They also highlight some of the moreneglected themes in his writings that are just beginning to be explored, and suggest profitableavenues for future research. The only conspicuous absence in this book is the recent work by DerekEdwards, David Middleton and colleagues on the social approach to Bartlett’s theory of remember-ing. Nevertheless, this book provides a wealth of information about Bartlett and his work that will beof use to readers with an interest in any aspect of his work, as well as readers who are interested inlearning more about the historical development of psychology as a discipline.

REFERENCE

Kintsch W. 1995. Introduction. In Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology,Bartlett FC (ed.). Cambridge University Press: Cambridge; xi–xv.

JAMES OSTUniversity of Portsmouth

DOI: 10.1002/acp.757

Text comprehension: theory and application

NARRATIVE COMPREHENSION, CAUSALITY, AND COHERENCE: ESSAYS IN HONOR OFTOM TRABASSO. Susan R. Goldman, Arthur C. Graesser, and Paul van den Broek (eds). LawrenceErlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. No. of pages VIþ 318 ISBN 0-80583-358. Price $79.95 (hardcover).

Nearly 20 years ago, Tom Trabasso helped to established the field of discourse psychology byshifting the level of analysis in his thinking about narrative comprehension from grammaticalstructures—the ‘surface form’—to the mental representation that comprehenders create when theygo beyond what’s explicitly stated in a text—the ‘meaning form.’ Trabasso’s work led to a number ofimportant articles in the 1980s (e.g. Trabasso and van den Broek, 1985), which posited that evenwhen a narrative is well written and sentences flow easily, the comprehender engages a text and triesto understand why a story unfolds as it does. What, for example, are the unstated goals, motives, anddesires that cause a character to behave in a particular manner? This collection of 16 chapters byleading theorists and researchers in the field of discourse psychology builds upon, and in some caseschallenges, Trabasso’s seminal work. The volume opens with an overview by the editors (Chapter l),remarks by Magliano and van den Broek (Chapter 2) on Trabasso’s role as a mentor and friend, and abrief history of three generations of text comprehension research by van den Broek and Gustafson(Chapter 3). The remaining chapters can be divided into two sections: a ‘theoretical’ section and an‘applied’ section.

The first section (Chapters 4–8) focuses on current theoretical debates in discourse psychology.There is a consensus among discourse researchers that text understanding involves generatinginferences through activation and application of both previously processed information and worldknowledge. However, there is less agreement about how and when such inferences are generated.O’Brien and Myers (Chapter 4) outline a view based on the idea that information for inferencegeneration is made available through a passive resonance process. In other words, the current

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contents of working memory activate previously encoded information and world knowledge, and thisinformation becomes available automatically. On the other side of the debate, Magliano (Chapter 5),Graesser and Wiemer-Hastings (Chapter 6), and Bower and Rinck (Chapter 8) argue that inferencegeneration is mediated by the comprehender’s goals and strategies—active processes. Thus, incontrast to O’Brien and Myer’s bottom-up emphasis, this ‘constructivist’ position stresses top-downinfluences on narrative comprehension. Compelling evidence—some from as of yet unpublishedresearch—is presented to support both positions. However, the reader is left with the impression thatthe contributors to this volume are as concerned with increasing understanding of text comprehen-sion as they are with defending a particular theoretical viewpoint. For example, O’Brien andMyers argue persuasively for the importance of a passive resonance mechanism in narrativecomprehension—but they also acknowledge that ‘the reader may choose to engage in activeproblem solving, a process beyond the scope of the resonance mechanism but well captured withinthe constructivist model’ (p. 48). Likewise, the constructivist position incorporates the assumptionthat many inferences in narrative comprehension are generated through a passive resonance process.The present reviewer’s only qualm with the theoretical section is that there is no serious discussion ofindividual differences in narrative comprehension. This is not surprising, because research onnarrative comprehension is grounded in the experimental tradition of psychological research.However, from both a theoretical and a practical perspective, it would be interesting to explorehow the ideas proposed in Chapters 4–8 can shed light on the obvious fact that people differ in theirability to understand language.

The second section (Chapters 9–16) has a distinctly applied flavour. For example, Goldman et al.(Chapter 9) ask whether video technology can be used to facilitate development of print-basedliteracy skills. Goldman et al. discovered that children who viewed a video version of a story showedhigher levels of comprehension than same-age children who heard an auditory version of the story.Moreover, the beneficial effect of video instruction was greatest for children identified as being at-risk for school failure. Here, then, is an example of research that is interesting from a theoreticalperspective, but which has straightforward relevance to literacy instruction. Chapters by Boscolo andCisotto (Chapter 10), Singer and Gagnon (Chapter 11), and Britt et al. (Chapter 13) haveimplications for instruction, as well. To illustrate, Boscolo and Cisotto describe their efforts tounderstand how theories of text comprehension can be extended to an important, but neglected,topic—writing. They propose that one way to improve students’ writing skills is to make them awareof the types of difficulties that readers encounter with respect to inference generation. Voss et al.(Chapter 14) discuss the use of narrative as a vehicle for argument in the courtroom. An intriguing,and somewhat troubling, conclusion from Voss et al.’s research is that the coherence of a narrativeused by an attorney to argue his or her client’s case can dramatically influence perceived guilt. Theclosing chapters (Chapters 15 and 16) extend ideas about narrative comprehension to counselingpsychology and clinical psychology. Ross et al. (Chapter 15) apply Trabasso’s ideas concerningnarrative comprehension to understanding how children resolve interpersonal conflicts. In particular,Ross et al. are interested in why and how two sides of the same story often emerge in conflictsituations. Finally, Stein et al. (Chapter 16) describe a programme of research aimed at under-standing how emotional, stressful, or traumatic experiences are represented in narrative form, andhow analysis of these narratives can elucidate factors that contribute to psychological well-being.

To sum up, these essays provide an excellent introduction to some of the major themes and issuesin current theoretical debates concerning text comprehension. In addition, however, the contributorsto this volume succeed at demonstrating how basic psychological research on narrative comprehen-sion can contribute to the solution of important, practically relevant problems in a variety of appliedsettings.

REFERENCE

Trabasso T, van den Broek P. 1985. Casual thinking and the representation of narrative events.Journal of Memory and Language 24: 612–630.

DAVID Z. HAMBRICKMichigan State University

DOI: 10.1002/acp.778

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