Challenges in Processes of Validation and Comprehension

ABSTRACT

There is accumulating evidence that readers continually evaluate the consistency, congruence, and coherence of text by processes of validation. Validation is initiated immediately on stimulus presentation, may proceed nonstrategically, and serves as a criterion for representational updating. However, validation exhibits a variety of deficiencies. Readers tend to overlook presupposed anomalies and are prone to both endorse text misinformation and to retain previously encoded misinformation. Here, several challenges concerning validation processing are considered against the backdrop of refinements of Kintsch's construction-integration model. Predictions about upcoming text might facilitate comprehension but demand validation. Conversely, the spillover of processing beyond the current text segment reflects processes subsequent to construction and integration and likely contributes to validation. This theoretical framework raises questions about the staging of comprehension processes and about their possible automaticity. Certain contemporary theories tend to highlight either the successes or deficiencies of validation, but they exhibit enough convergence to offer the promise of an effective analysis.

Acknowledgments

This article is based on the theoretical portion of my Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award presentation at the 2018 meeting of the Society for Text and Discourse in Brighton, England. I am deeply grateful to the members of the Society for this honor. I thank the many colleagues and students who have collaborated on my validation research and whose work is cited here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Without a retraction, the critical idea of course did not constitute misinformation.

² This phenomenon and the memory-based text processing analysis are discussed later.

³ Items like (1) are called garden-path sentences because understanders are temporarily misled about their interpretation.

⁴ Rayner and Sereno (1994) noted that eye fixation spillover may sometimes reflect the failure to preview the earlier of two succeeding segments.

⁵ It is only perplexing because we lack conscious insight into the mechanisms of our cognition.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [RGPIN/9800].