Abstract

PARENTE, Maria Alice de Mattos Pimenta; HOLDERBAUM, Candice Stefen; VIRBEL, Jacques  and  NESPOULOUS, Jean-Luc. Question-asking organization. Psicol. Reflex. Crit. [online]. 2005, vol.18, n.2, pp. 267-276. ISSN 0102-7972.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0102-79722005000200015.

This study aimed to verify two hypotheses of the text questionability theory (Virbel): 1) the recall is similar to the author's question-asking organization; and 2) the similarity between the recall and the questionability force will be in function of the text consistency. A first experiment compared the recall of 53 subjects with the questionability force of the elementary sentences. Significant correlations and regressions between the two variables were found. A second experiment analyzed the recall of 141 subjects in 2 versions of the story of the first experiment differentiated by the degree of consistency Correlations were found only in the version with higher degree of consistency. The results of the 2 experiments were in accordance with the questionability theory in that, in order to understand and to reconstruct a story, the 'comprehender' follows a hierarchical network, which organizes the unities of meaning based on their questionability force.

Keywords : Textual conprehention; question asking; psycholinguistics; coherence.