- 106 undergraduate psychology students from a university in the Midwest
- Used 4 expository texts about science, should be understandable to college freshmen
- Topics were development of thunderstorms, heart functioning problems, creation of coal, and food chain processes
- Each passage consisted of 20 to 32 sentences

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

- Data collection
- Causal analysis
- Experimental procedure

Measuring discourse-level processes with verbal protocols and latent semantic analysis - methodology

Millis, K., Magliano, J., & Todaro, S. (2006). Measuring discourse-level processes with verbal protocols and latent semantic analysis. Scientific Studies of Reading, 10(3), 225-240. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s1532799xssr1003_2?casa_token=t1DCNTJm4G0AAAAA:4Zmsq1hksZB2rZsEYOs0VuIGfn16rDbUviE39Om4DyMxLz0HWOC7RzN9yyymRidOj9nS1VQqXTtWZA

Measuring discourse-level processes with verbal protocols and latent semantic analysis

Measuring discourse-level processes with verbal protocols and latent semantic analysis - methodology: data collection

- Performed a causal analysis to determine if sentences in each text are related through causal antecedents
- Local causes: causal antecedents are in consecutive sentences so they should be in the reader’s working memory; 53% of sentences had causal antecedents
- Distal causes: causal antecedents are not in consecutive sentences so they would no longer be in the reader’s working memory; 47% of sentences 
- 14% of sentences had both local and distal causes and 33% had neither 
- If contents of a sentence require knowledge of previous sentences, then your brain will prompt you to recall those sentences through local or distal causes

Measuring discourse-level processes with verbal protocols and latent semantic analysis - methodology: causal analysis

- Participants shown one sentence at once and told to write down what they think 
- Once sentences are shown, they remain on the screen so participants can refer back to them if needed
- 54 participants randomly assigned to thunderstorm and food chain texts and the other 52 randomly assigned to coal and heart texts
- Participants took Nelson-Denny reading comprehension test after reading each passage and after reading both passages, an additional 2 short answer tests about both texts
- Short answer test consisted of 4 text-based questions on specific details from one sentence and 4 situation model questions that require inferences over multiple sentences 

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