Connective Comprehension in Adults: The Influence of Lexical Transparency, Frequency, and Individual Differences

Merel Scholman*, Marian Marchal, Vera Demberg

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The comprehension of connectives is crucial for understanding the discourse relations that make up a text. We studied connective comprehension in English to investigate whether adult comprehenders acquire the meaning and intended use of connectives to a similar extent and how connective features and individual differences impact connective comprehension. A coherence judgment study indicated that differences in how well people comprehend connectives depend on the lexical transparency but not on the frequency of the connective. Furthermore, individual variation between participants can be explained by their vocabulary size, nonverbal IQ, and cognitive reasoning style. Print exposure was not found to be relevant. These findings provide further insight into the factors that influence discourse processing and highlight the need to consider individual differences in discourse comprehension research as well as the need to examine a wider range of connectives in empirical studies of discourse markers.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)381-403
Number of pages23
JournalDiscourse Processes
Volume61
Issue number8
Early online date19 Mar 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Funding

This project received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme (ERC Starting Grant ’Individualized Interaction in Discourse’, grant agreement No. 948878).

FundersFunder number
European Research Council
European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme948878

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