Message from David Keeble, on 'spreading activation'.
>Dear all,
>For some time now I have been interested the vast array of
>connections between textual expressions that need to be
>made by readers in comprehending a piece of literature being read.
>
>I have come across the expression "spreading activation" in the
>cognitive and functional literature on text comprehension, for
>example in Giv=F3n (1993) 'The grammar of referential coherence as
>mental processing instructions' _Language_ vol 30-1 and in
>Kintsch (1998) _Comprehension: a paradigm for cognition_CUP.
>This notion seems to me to be envisaged as an automatic response to
>a cue (a word or phrase, for example, in a text) that activates nodes
>(concepts or propositions) in a knowledge network that is created
>=66rom the "text base" and other contextual knowledge as a
>representation of the text. This activation seems to be dependent
>more on the putative general architecture of memory than on any
>pragmatic or infernential process, and more specifically on what
>Kintsch calls "retrieval structures" (specialized schemas created for
>fast recall from long term memory in specific domains - we are all
>supposed to be specialists in text processing , within certain
>general domains).
>What puzzles me about this "Comprehension Integration" model of
>Kintsch's, in which this general idea of 'spreading activation'
>operates, is that there seems to be no need for any searching
>(certainly no mention of it) or any strategy or criterion for
>decision making (like relevance) between alternative,
>equally or competingly activated nodes - assuming they arise. Does
>anyone know much about this model and understand it better than I
>do and whether it works in the way I have represented it? or about
>similar models and the way they work? Is anyone interested in this
>issue? Can anyone shed any light on what, to me, is an anomaly?
>
>Cordially,
>
>David Keeble
>Communication Studies,
>Middlesex University,
>White Hart Lane,
>London N17 8HR
>
>
>
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Robyn Carston
Department of Phonetics & Linguistics, UCL
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK
Tel 020 7679 3174
Fax 020 7383 4108
URL http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/robyn/home.htm
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