Cambridge University Press Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition

In this landmark volume, Walter Kintsch presents a theory of human text comprehension that he has refined and developed over the past 20 years. Characterizing the comprehension process as one of constraint satisfaction, this comprehensive theory is concerned with mental processes - not primarily with the analysis of materials to be understood. The author describes comprehension as a two-stage process: first, approximate, inaccurate representations are constructed via context insensitive construction rules, which are then integrated via a process of spreading activation. In Part I, the general theory is presented and an attempt is made to situate it within the current theoretical landscape in cognitive science. In the second part, many of the topics are discussed that are typically found in a cognitive psychology text. The book addresses how relevant knowledge is activated during reading and how readers recognize and recall texts. It then draws the implications of these findings for how people solve word problems, act out verbal instructions and make decisions based on verbal information.