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Processing time and memory for sentences were examined as a function of the degree of semantic and causal relatedness between sentences in short narratives. In Experiments 1-2B, semantic and causal relatedness between sentence pairs was independently manipulated. Causal relatedness was assessed through pretesting and semantic relatedness was assessed with Latent Semantic Analysis. Causal relatedness influenced processing time and memory. Semantic relatedness influenced memory, and influenced processing time when causality was not manipulated within an experiment and the situation described by the sentence pairs was somewhat difficult to construct. Experiment 3 utilized naturalistic texts. Semantic and causal relatedness between sentences influenced ...

Processing time and memory for sentences were examined as a function of the degree of semantic and causal relatedness between sentences in short narratives. In Experiments 1-2B, semantic and causal relatedness between sentence pairs was independently manipulated. Causal relatedness was assessed through pretesting and semantic relatedness was assessed with Latent Semantic Analysis. Causal relatedness influenced processing time and memory. Semantic relatedness influenced memory, and influenced processing time when causality was not manipulated within an experiment and the situation described by the sentence pairs was somewhat difficult to construct. Experiment 3 utilized naturalistic texts. Semantic and causal relatedness between sentences influenced ...

Participants remembered a short set of words while reading syntactically complex sentences (object-extracted clefts) and syntactically simpler sentences (subject-extracted clefts) in a memory-load study. The study also manipulated whether the words in the set and the words in the sentence were of matched or unmatched types (common nouns vs. proper names). Performance in sentence comprehension was worse for complex sentences than for simpler sentences, and this effect was greater when the type of words in the memory load matched the type of words in the sentence. These results indicate that syntactic processing is not modular, instead suggesting that it relies ...

A series of self-paced reading time experiments was performed to assess how characteristics of noun phrases (NPs) contribute to the difference in processing difficulty between object- and subject-extracted relative clauses. Structural semantic characteristics of the NP in the embedded clause (definite vs. indefinite and definite vs. generic) did not influence the magnitude of the processing difficulty even though corpus analysis showed a strong association between these NP classes and type of relative clause. Richness of lexical semantic content in a descriptive NP also had no influence on processing difficulty. However, the difference in processing difficulty was significantly reduced when a ...

A series of self-paced reading time experiments was performed to assess how characteristics of noun phrases (NPs) contribute to the difference in processing difficulty between object- and subject-extracted relative clauses. Structural semantic characteristics of the NP in the embedded clause (definite vs. indefinite and definite vs. generic) did not influence the magnitude of the processing difficulty even though corpus analysis showed a strong association between these NP classes and type of relative clause. Richness of lexical semantic content in a descriptive NP also had no influence on processing difficulty. However, the difference in processing difficulty was significantly reduced when a ...

Study objective: Emergency department patients have been shown to have difficulty understanding written discharge instructions. We attempted to determine whether improvements in comprehension can be achieved by simplification of available materials. Design: We have previously tested patient understanding of standard discharge instructions. For this study, we simplified the standard instructions. Patients were given one of two simplified instruction sets. After reading the instructions, each patient was asked to answer five specific written questions about them. Results were compared with those from the original study. Setting: ED of a large inner-city university hospital. Participants: Four hundred twenty-three adult ED patients who ...

Background Prior studies have documented a high prevalence of patients who misunderstand prescription drug warning labels, placing them at risk for medication error. We evaluated whether the use of "enhanced print" drug warnings could improve patient comprehension beyond a current standard. Methods An evaluation of enhanced print warning labels was conducted at 2 academic and 2 community health primary care clinics in Chicago, Illinois, and Shreveport, Louisiana. In total, 500 adult patients were consecutively recruited and assigned to receive (1) current standard drug warning labels on prescription containers (standard), (2) drug warnings with text rewritten in plain language (simplified text), ...

A simplified version of the HIVNET prototype HIV vaccine process was developed for adolescents at risk of HIV by: (1) reducing reading level; (2) reorganizing; (3) adding illustrations; and (4) obtaining focus group feedback. Then adolescents (N=187) in three cities were randomly assigned to the standard or simplified version. Adolescents receiving the simplified version had significantly higher comprehension scores (80% correct vs. 72% correct), with 37% of items significantly more likely to be answered correctly. They were also significantly more likely to recall study benefits and procedures. Overall, adolescents were less willing to participate in a potential HIV vaccine trial ...

The authors examined how the organization and presentation modality of automated telephone messages influence older and younger adult memory for appointment information. Older and younger adults organized appointment information in similar ways, suggesting that they share a schema for attending appointments (Experiment 1). Older and younger adults' memories for messages improved when these messages were compatible with this schema. Longer messages were remembered less accurately than shorter messages (Experiment 2). Schema-compatible organization and length had similar effects on memory for printed versus spoken messages (Experiment 3). Thus, messages organized in terms of what clients know about appointments may enhance the ...

The authors examined how the organization and presentation modality of automated telephone messages influence older and younger adult memory for appointment information. Older and younger adults organized appointment information in similar ways, suggesting that they share a schema for attending appointments (Experiment 1). Older and younger adults' memories for messages improved when these messages were compatible with this schema. Longer messages were remembered less accurately than shorter messages (Experiment 2). Schema-compatible organization and length had similar effects on memory for printed versus spoken messages (Experiment 3). Thus, messages organized in terms of what clients know about appointments may enhance the ...