Irwin, J. W. (1980). The effect of linguistic cohesion on prose comprehension. Journal of Reading Behavior, 12 (4), 325-331.

Irwin, J.

1980

Irwin, J. W. (1980). The effect of linguistic cohesion on prose comprehension. Journal of Reading Behavior, 12 (4), 325-331.

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This study examined the relationship between the number of cohesive ties in a passage, as defined by Halliday and Hasan (1976), and free and prompted recall scores. Two versions of a passage on gibbons were developed, with one version containing about twice as many ties as the other. Sixty college studets participated: each read one of the passage-versions and then, either immediately or after 20 minutes, recorded his/her free recall and answered the prompted-recall questions. Though there were no differences between the treatment groups in terms of the number of micro-level propositions recalled, there were significant differences between these groups in terms of the theoretical reading time/100-propositions ratios, the numbers of reported macro-level statements, and the numers of prompted-recall questions answered correctly in the delayed condition. These results support theories stressing the importance of coherent links in the comprehension process and suggest a new "readability" variable.

The results of this study indicate that the number of cohesive ties in a passage may be related to comprehension. Though cohesion level may not affect the total number of propositions which mature readers recall in a free recall task, it does seem to affect the ease of comprehension defined a the reading time per hundred propositions recalled, and it does seem to affect memory stability as measured by a delayed prompted recall task. These results support comprehension theories which stress the importance of the formation of coherent links during the comprehension process.

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