Facilitation of the Comprehension of Written and Spoken Discourse

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of studies that have investigated the role of the establishment of discourse connections and the detection of inconsistencies between prior knowledge and new information on the facilitation of the comprehension of written and spoken discourse. With this aim, we will first describe studies on written discourse that have examined the effect of increasing the establishment of discourse connections by implementing text revision procedures, and studies that have tested the contribution of promoting the detection of inconsistencies between prior knowledge and new ideas by presenting refutation texts. Next, we will introduce preliminary studies on spoken discourse that have examined the effect of the establishment of a high number of causal connections and the presence of discourse markers, and studies that have tested the contribution of promoting the detection of inconsistencies between prior knowledge and new ideas by making explicit that incorrect ideas will be introduced in a conversation. This overview will allow us to propose contributions that studies on the comprehension of discourse presented in both modalities can make to student learning.