The Effect of Linguistic Cohesion on Prose Comprehension

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Abstract
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 students 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 numbers of micro-level propositions recalled, there were significant differences between these groups in terms of the theoretical reading time/100-propositions-recalled ratios, the numbers of reported macro-level statements, and the numbers 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.